


NEC SPE, NEC METV

by infamouslastwords



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: 1600s, Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Baroque Period, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Renaissance, Benefactor Will, Blood Kink, Canon-Typical Violence, Creative Anachronisms, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, Firenze | Florence, First Time, Hannibal Lector is not a Cannibal... kind of, Intercrural Sex, Italy, M/M, Murder, Mystery, POV Hannibal Lecter, Painter Hannibal, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Medical Horror, Pining, Praise Kink, Religious Fanaticism, Renaissance Era, Rich Will, Seizures, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Will Graham has Epilepsy, poor hannibal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:02:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 51,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28618479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infamouslastwords/pseuds/infamouslastwords
Summary: (Without Hope, Without Fear) Painter/Benefactor Hannigram AU. Signore Graham is a wealthy arts benefactor in the late 1600s Florence. Hannibal is a middle aged, penurious artist who is hired to paint Signore Graham’s portrait. Of the Baroquetenebrosidiscipline, Hannibal is a master of shadows, emotion, and violence. The prideful and refined Signore finds a wholly unexpected challenge in employing the Painter, each pushed and pulled by an undeniable magnetism and the slow discovery of sordid, mirrored mysteries from both of their pasts.
Relationships: Hannibal Lector & OCs, Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 53
Kudos: 76





	1. Piazza Torquato Tasso

The doublet and linen shirt left for him are black: Blacker than an eclipse, blacker than the manganese oxide from Sicily used to create such dramatic sweeps of shadows across the works he had made for the dead man. It is only fitting, now, that he should be gifted such a void in return—his body becoming nothingness as each austere item of funerary clothing slips over his limbs.

The hired wailers wail on, while the pallbearers walk in rhythm to his own broad strides. It is easy, now, lifting the scant weight of the wizened body of his benefactor within its simple coffin, with the help of fellow countrymen. Some he recognizes from their brief visits to his benefactor’s refined Tuscan _palazzi_ , but others are entire strangers to him—regardless, they are here, hoisting the bones and final resting place of the Signore upon their shoulders.

He feels touched by the death in a way that is as removed as one can be from someone who paid, once, for your room and board. Who, according to your own proclivities, allowed you free range of the compound and, beyond that fence, all Florence had to offer. Being relatively poor and having been in the employ of Signore de Reviello for the past fifteen years, Hannibal finds himself bereft of what to do next for perhaps the first time in his forty years on Earth.

As they hoist the coffin into the stucco wall of the _cimitero_ , and the mason begins to hammer a solid metal plaque over the opening, Hannibal wishes coolly that he had the forethought to plan for this kind of event. He had become family, yes, to the de Reviellos—but was, mostly, a black sheep. _The Painter_ , he was called behind his back with some disdain. He knew where he stood with them, and his benefactor, but for all the ordinary kindnesses shown to him in return for his skillful, clever works, he had expected a temporary safety net to scoop him up, or small pittance to sustain him, when that simple cough turned suddenly deadly and took the final breath of his benefactor beyond the veil.

This was too big a wish, it seems. As he waits near the end of the procession, de Reviello’s widow, sons, and daughters take extreme care to avoid his unassuming gaze. _So that is how it will be_ , he finds himself thinking. The next thought is: _Time to find a hovel_.

Which is how he lives once more among the inhabitants of Piazza Torquato Tasso. Located in sesto Oltrarno, the area has long been associated with vagabonds, the destitute, and other unsavory inhabitants from which Hannibal has always drawn his most piquant inspiration. In his youth as a fledgling painter, prostitutes, used as models, became his fast friends; the bars had every type of liquor available to his wanting tongue, and outside each pub door was a brawl just waiting for the rejoinder of his willing fists. He is pleased to find that it has not changed so much as to be unrecognizable—even if he, himself, may have.

 _Tabacchi Dorato_ has an unfamiliar bar tend, but its arched brick ceiling and candle-holding chandeliers tucked into each domed corner remain the same. The space still has a dankness to it, as if mildew and mold were always threatening to completely take over. Close to the Arno, Hannibal is surprised that the basement bar has not yet been sunken by the city’s low waterline.

He proffers some coin inside a vinegar-filled tray in return for a deep red wine. At this hour the bar has not yet filled up, and he has space and time enough to set out to reacclimating himself with the peoples and products of this specific ward of Florence. He has spent too much time outside it, only returning upon whim and not necessity. Therefore he no longer knows which particular spars have passed between the different wards of the city, who call other neighborhoods home and answer to other lesser gods of capital. Perhaps if he could hear a conversation, or join in some mental exercise with the more learned among his besotted compatriots, he could grasp the current culture and times of the neighborhood he will again claim as home.

He exits the bar rather unsuccessfully, two glasses later. There was little of interest within the dome of the space, and a relatively quiet night has passed blandly before his eyes. He takes a half-remembered laneway back to the residential area of the ward, fully ready to repose for the night within some disused doorway, and finds himself abruptly in the center of a street fight.

Many moons have passed since Hannibal once traded fists with the other hard-made men of this ward. His years, not too advanced, were still not once what they were. Out of practice, now, and alone, Hannibal wonders if he should flee or fight—his whole body tensing while his brain, reptilian-like after the wine, attempts to decide.

He waits too long, and it is decided for him what he must do. The first man, his shirt tails rent from prior altercation, grasps him by the scruff of his neck and pulls his hair. Hannibal feels himself react immediately, viscerally, letting his fingers curl into a fist that lands with a meaty packing sound into the temple of his assailant. The man drops like a heavy sack to the ground, not moving another muscle. The second man rushes him without giving him time to take a breath in, the hard back hand across Hannibal’s jaw causing the taste of copper to ooze into his mouth. He staggers, spitting out a thick gob of blood onto the cobbles beneath his feet.

“ _Figlio di puttana_!” the other man exclaims, making a harsh swipe with his fingernails from his throat forward, under his chin, ending in the open air in Hannibal’s direction. Hannibal grits his teeth, lips splitting into a sardonic and dangerous smile. The clean rage surges through him, and this long-forgotten feeling is almost euphoric as he descends on the last assailant.

He stands over the two men’s bodies for a moment, huffing out breaths made visible in the cold air by the heat of his body, collecting his bearings. A slow, cheerful whistling meets his ears and increases in volume, coming closer, but Hannibal does not move from the bodies he has felled. His right hand throbs with a sobering pain, and he relishes in the feeling of it.

“Hanni?” he hears a voice call out. He turns to find the source of the name only his fondest friends refer to him by. The man that approaches him is beaming good-naturedly, finely coiled curls of coppery hair half-concealed underneath a black woolen beret. He is apparently immune to the bodies on the cobbles, not giving them more than a passing glance as he steps over one on his way to Hannibal.

“Paolo,” Hannibal calls out, striding forward to meet the man with a bear-like embrace.

“I would recognize that beautiful swing anywhere in this forsaken world,” Paolo rejoices.

They part and Hannibal studies his old friend’s face, unseen for the better part of six years. “You’ve returned from Venice?”

“I have,” Paolo responds. “Had some hard luck upon the bay,” he adds with a sly smirk, obviously not too inconvenienced by whatever had come to pass. The freckles across his broad, flat nose seem to dance. He does not look a day older. “What brings you here, dressed as if holding vigil for the dead?”

Hannibal looks down to his clothing. He had not changed, and only unbuttoned his doublet so it flowed easily over his linen tunic, since the funeral earlier that day. It seems an age ago to him, now.

“Because I have been,” Hannibal replies. “De Reviello has died. I am once again at the mercy of Fortune.”

“Along with all the rest of us poor souls here in sesto Oltrarno,” Paolo quips. “Come, we must celebrate this chance encounter. You’re with Paolo again, so it seems Fortune has decided already to bless you with her favor.”

Hannibal laughs, feeling at once welcomed by his friend’s easy kindness. They stalk off into the street, boot heels and voices alike echoing off the cobbles and walls of narrow buildings, before arriving at Paolo’s residence.

The man’s stone walls are decorated by fine tapestries, embroidered with storied images of far-away lands. Born in Northern Africa to a brown mother, and a cream-white father who gifted him the touch of fire, Paolo has his whole life turned his depthless, dark eyes toward the far corners of the world. Hannibal last saw him waving from the prow of a ship in a port of Rimini, set on Venice and the many plunders that could be had from the bustling trade city.

“You’re in rare form tonight, Paolo,” Hannibal chides as the man finishes a long-winded tale about the women of varying provenances he had encountered while working as a merchant on the Venice docks and canals. The man pours himself another glass of wine, passing the jar to Hannibal with a roughly melodic laugh.

“Tell me how much life you’ve lived in my absence, friend,” Paolo requests after swallowing a mouthful of the ruby red liquid. “How has old Hanni exploited those devilishly good looks and handsomely wrought hands?”

“Nothing as mesmerizing as your own tall tales, Paolo,” Hannibal assents with a small smile. “I’m afraid I’ve become quite used to doing not much more than looking out the window of a villa, dreaming of days long passed as I paint yet another austere nature scene for an aging man.”

Paolo looks like he could both cry and burst into laughter. “Tell me this is not true.”

Hannibal shrugs, turning half of his attention toward a nearby candle. He passes his fingertips over the flame a few times, before withdrawing them to take another sip of wine. “I am surprised even by myself, friend.”

“We must fix this,” Paolo decides. He raises quickly to his feet, slamming his glass down on a modest wooden table nearby before rummaging through a trunk. He pulls from it a lovely off-white tunic with bishop style sleeves, almost gauzy in its opacity.

“I fear that both your words and your clothes are almost entirely too depressing to be witnessed. Please, change, immediately.” With that, Paolo throws the garment in his face. Hannibal catches it, slopping a few drops of wine into the rushes beneath in his haste.

There are small, intricate embroideries around the hem of the sleeves and wide neckline. Hannibal does not recognize the style, nor the type of ghostly iridescent shell that the buttons around the finely tapered wrists are. Upon closer inspection, he finds that they are each carved into individual flower blossoms.

“And a doublet,” Paolo says with the snap of his fingers, moving to yet another trunk that seems to encroach upon every corner in the small space. He relocates some dirty dishes, once more digging into the depths of his treasure trove.

As Hannibal changes out of the black linen, replacing it with the fine white tunic, Paolo is throwing a silk thing his way, something viscerally blood-red, with a dark blue fastening.

“Hold it up, let us see,” Paolo demands. Hannibal hangs the doublet against his chest, watching with abstract amusement as his friend ponders the decision. “No, no,” Paolo finally decides. “Give it back. You need a different color. This one is wrong.”

Hannibal hands the silk garment back with a delicate shake of his head. “And what color do you purport to clothe me in, Tailor?”

“Ha!” Paolo responds, flashing a ferocious smile over his shoulder as he once again sinks into a trunk. “Something so refined that it won me the love of a Kashmiri. One moment.”

The thing Paolo gives him next is as soft grey as a mourning dove, with flashes of cold fire that run, swirling in whorls and eddies, through it, almost as if it were a mirage. The light from the candles dance against the thick damask.

“It is beautiful,” Hannibal murmurs, taking his feeling hand from the fabric to pull his arms through each opening. The fastening is a thinly braided rope of silvery silk, which he secures with two fingers into a loop knot.

Paolo is silent, watching, expression soaked with his approval. “Already feeling better, aren’t we?” he asks softly, kindly. Hannibal nods.

“Indeed. Thank you, friend.”

* * *

The next day, Paolo takes Hannibal to find a hovel of his own. Through the acquaintance of a friend, he is able to set Hannibal up in a suitable room. The floor space is quaint, but it has a wide and irregular window which starts more than halfway up the wall. This allows the sun easy access to the space, offering near all-day lighting. The rushes on the floor are fresh, and the space comes with a simple table, chair, and mattress. It is not too far from Paolo’s own rooms, a mere ten-minute walk across the square, and so Hannibal agrees with a handshake that he will take it. The owner slips a few of Hannibal’s coins past his teeth, grinding them indelicately between his molars, before depositing them inside his doublet.

It is a full week passed before Hannibal’s hand recovers from that first fight. He and Paolo spend nearly every night at the _Tabacchi Dorato_ , and Hannibal sees more familiar faces the longer they sit and drink. He has forgotten how much life and color these small spaces contain, dirty as they are, and full of movement and consequence: A pool teeming with tadpoles.

Hannibal feels once more at home in the chaos and predictability of petty frustrations, simple joys, and overt violence. Inspired in a way he has not felt for years, the painter begins to bring around his sketchbook and charcoal on these outings, keeping some sketches, and offering up others in exchange for a drink. He gets to know the bar tend Nicolo well this way, and uses quick lines to capture his gruffness with a sincerity and attention to detail that clearly touches the man deeply, even if he habitually says nothing upon seeing the finished art. The quietness that befalls Hannibal during these twenty minutes of focus, where his hands fluidly bring forth something living from the page, only stopping fitfully to raise a glass to his lips, is something akin to worship. It is only when he finishes that the world returns to him in a rush, in all its technicolor sights and sounds.

Weeks pass in this way, easily, before Hannibal looks around the bar and finds that there is not one face he has not captured. He looks to Paolo, sidled close to their friend the prostitute Zanetta, suddenly at a loss. He knows he cannot continue this way without work, merely following the dark whims of the night and sleeping until late afternoon.

Paolo stumbles home with him, Zanetta in tow. He lets the two of them curl up on his mattress, reposing heavily in the simple chair. He watches them sleep easily with the help of the wine. Zanetta’s jet black hair is long and oiled like a raven’s wing, extending over the edge of the mattress, spilling to tangle with the rushes. Behind her, Paolo has tucked his nose smally into the crux of her pale neck, his freckles like the pinpricks of stars in a dusky sky.

Hannibal spends the night collecting Paolo’s and Zanetta’s features with his fingers smudging charcoal against the page, attempting serenely to fill the blankness with his sleeping friends’ deeply human beauty.

Hannibal wakes to find two large, pale green eyes staring at him from atop the wooden table.

“Hello, my whiskered friend.”

The cat is sleek and lean—a male—with a motley tan and black tortoiseshell coat. He flicks his tail lazily, regarding Hannibal with a guarded gaze.

“How have you come to grace my hovel?”

The cat blinks, then turns its pointed face as it picks itself up to pace in a tight circle on the surface of the table. It shows Hannibal its haunches before setting another stare over its shoulder, and Hannibal reaches out to lightly stroke the feline’s spine. The cat arches into the touch before throwing itself down on its side, a silent motion that elicits a small smile from Hannibal himself.

“You’re quite sprightly, are you not?” he says with some light affection.

The cat uses its back paws to quickly kick, holding Hannibal’s hand in a vice with its front legs. The scratches cut sharply but not deeply, and Hannibal delights in the feistiness of this creature.

“Made a new friend, Hanni?” Zanetta asks, her melic voice full of sleep. She stirs against the mattress, against Paolo, who is still deeply asleep. The late afternoon light casts elegant shadows across her fine features.

“I think I may have,” Hannibal replies. “Although I know not from whence he came.”

“He’s very pretty,” she says, running a lithe hand over her cheek. She raises herself from the mattress, using both hands to collect her anarchic hair in a knot at the nape of her neck. “You should give him a name.”

Hannibal pauses to think about this, continuing to tickle at the belly of the beast. Its mouth opens in a wild, possessed sort of playfulness before he sinks his teeth into the flesh of Hannibal’s palm. He lets out a low, muffled growl but does not let go. Hannibal laughs.

On the door, a knock sounds. Zanetta leans back against the stucco wall, her fingers coming down to brush lightly against Paolo’s cheek. She raises an eyebrow.

“Whoever could that be?”

Hannibal lifts himself stiffly from the chair, the cat giving him a scandalized look before it hops off the table. Opening the door, the cat prances out onto the street and Hannibal finds himself face to face with a finely dressed messenger.

“Signore Hannibal Lector?” The man, or more likely, teen, has a milky complexion and long, dirty blonde curls underneath his cap. His voice is full of youth, not yet dropped low into manhood.

“Yes?” Hannibal replies.

“A message from my Signore,” the youth states, handing over a piece of parchment with one gloved hand. The glove is made of sheep skin, light tan, and finely tooled. Hannibal reaches out with his own hand, bruised and cat-scratched, to take the paper into his fingers.

“I will wait outside for your response,” the youth bows. Hannibal nods before closing the door, breaking the wax seal on the note in order to open it.

At this point, Paolo has woken from the sounds of the heavy door and unfamiliar voices. “What’s happening, Hanni?” he asks curiously, slurring. Zanetta swats him, eliciting a groan from the man.

“He’s not yet read it, idiot. Give him a moment.”

Paolo regards her with a slow smile. “My stars, I love your fire. Come here,” he demands, wrapping her up in his arms. He roars as she struggles playfully against him.

Hannibal reads the high, narrow hand found on the note:

> _Signore Lector, I have come to know about you through your late benefactor’s twice-removed niece. She speaks highly of your work and has shown me a quaint painting from your earlier years. I enjoy the way you once captured the faces of beasts and am curious if your current style would please me, in the form of a commissioned portrait. Should you agree, come on the morrow for an interview so I may ascertain if you are an adequate hand for the task._

The name signed after this invitation is not one he is familiar with. The Signore de Reviello was never much one for high society in his later years, and as a consequence Hannibal is relatively unfamiliar with some pockets of the well-to-do families within Florence. However, this man has clearly heard of him.

 _Faces of beasts_ , Hannibal re-reads. If it is a portrait, why would it matter if he can capture the faces of beasts?

Paolo has allowed himself to be restrained by Zanetta’s elegant hands, and they both are staring curiously from the mattress when Hannibal raises his gaze from the note.

“A man wants me to paint his portrait.”

“Then it is a fine thing that you have been practicing, lately,” Paolo grins.

“Scoundrel,” Hannibal mutters, turning his attention back to the note in his fingers. He thinks about de Reviello, and the tedium he had unintentionally gathered like wool gathers burs, over the years spent there. He had just been able to shake some of this feeling from his bones, get back to finding himself again. He looks back to his friends and their beautiful faces, and has the deep desire for another glass of wine.

However, Hannibal knows he will not always be able to dance for his dinner, knows the charcoal that stains his fingertips as he reaches out to bring the bartered glasses to his lips is only a temporary, fleeting fix. Soon he will not be able to eat, much less drink. He pulls open the door.

“Tell your Signore I will be there at ten tomorrow,” Hannibal tells the youth, handing back the summons. The youth does not extend his hand to take it, but instead says,

“Signore, if you please, the directions are on the back.”

“I know the hill this villa sits on, boy. It is only twenty minutes east,” Hannibal says, keeping the paper proffered.

Hesitantly, the youth takes the slip back and bows shallowly. Hannibal shuts the door.

“Wow,” Zanetta exclaims, wrapping her fingers in Paolo’s. “That was unexpected of you, Hanni.”

“You’ve been having so much fun with us, have you not?” Paolo adds. “Is it time to return to pretentious monotony so soon? Do we rankle you so?”

Hannibal laughs, sighing. He lowers himself by the mattress, turning to wedge himself firmly between his friends.

“I could never tire of you,” Hannibal says. “I merely need money to sustain our nary-a-care lifestyle.”

“Work is work,” Zanetta agrees. She runs her eyes over Hannibal’s grey-blonde locks, asking him, “How long will you be gone?”

“Well, let us not get ahead of ourselves. He may not be _pleased_ with me.”

“The note was that bad?” Paolo asks with a grimace. “Do you know of him?”

“Yes, and no,” Hannibal says. “But a portrait is two months, at most. I’ll make sure to arrange to keep my nights in sesto Oltrarno.”

“Please do,” Paolo agrees. “I have to ensure you never return to that forlorn vagrant I found wandering the cold streets a month ago.”

“Thank God for you, Paolo,” Hannibal teases.

“Oh, He frequently _is_ thanked for me,” Paolo quips back, crossing himself. “Now, come, Zanetta. I’m sure there are things our Hanni must do to prepare.”

“ _Tabacchi Dorato_ , tonight?” Zanetta asks as she bends to gather her shoes from the rushes.

“Yes,” the men agree.

Hannibal sees his friends out, and once they leave, the tortoiseshell cat once more runs into his room. He bends to scratch behind its ears, those wide eyes looking up at him with an opaque knowing.

“How does Sangiovese sound, little beast?” Hannibal murmurs to the cat. “Or, rather, Gio?”

The cat yawns widely, showing off little daggers of bone-white teeth. He hops back up onto the table before curling into a sphere, shutting his eyes with seeming approval.

Hannibal sets to gathering his things for the next morning, wondering exactly what this Signore Graham _is_ pleased by.


	2. Villa della Osso Bianche pt. 1

Hannibal wakes once again to pale, green eyes. He brings a hand up from underneath his pillow, placing it gently on Gio’s head.

“Good morning, friend,” he admires, with the lingering heaviness of sleep in his voice. The cat presses up into his touch, then abruptly turns to hop from the surface of the mattress. Hannibal takes this as a cue that the beast wishes for him to wake, stand. He has not woken before noon since leaving de Reviello’s villa.

Recalling Paolo’s suggestion from the night before, Hannibal dresses in the fine white tunic and heavenly grey doublet that the man had given him upon their chance reunion. _For_ , as Paolo said, _it would be impossible for anyone of any gender to find displeasure in your visage with that getup on._

Hannibal enjoys the stretch imposed on the lean muscles in his thighs as he makes his way up the hill sat to the east of sesto Oltrarno, saddling the southern side of the Arno. He has tucked a sketching medium underneath his arm, with various charcoals and supplies in the small, worn leather bag slung across his back. The villa of this Signore Graham is just underneath the basilica San Miniato, the highest point in the city. A modest cobbled road leads up the hill, winding sideways and doubling over itself amongst unorderly, multi-trunked hedge maples and spiny bushes of dark-green juniper.

The Villa della Osso Bianche has Calacatta marble steps just outside the compound—there are four of them, with their dove grey, filamentesque veins against pure white, nestled into the sandy soil as if it were only common stone. Hannibal pauses here for a moment after his climb, not yet wishing to cross this threshold, and instead turns to admire the exceptional view of the Arno and dome of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore to the north. He collects his breath, inhaling a faint, musky incense blowing over from the basilica. In addition to this, the air is clearer up on the hill than down below—a bit cooler, with the wind blowing sometimes in gusts over the valley the river makes through the city.

The villa itself has an open construction with a white rusticated stone exterior, as opposed to the golden _pietraforte_ found otherwhere in nearly the whole city. Hannibal guesses that this is what gives the villa its strange, haunting name. He spies a small west-facing garden populated by fruit trees not yet flowering. To the north-east is a large weeping cypress partially obfuscating a large, open window that no doubt offers a beautiful view similar to the one Hannibal just partook in.

He crosses the marble threshold, the stone like blocks of ice against his shoe soles. The front door is elaborate—an exquisite wooden testament to a stalking stag, its antlers formed into a crown unlike any other Hannibal had seen nor heard tale of on royalty.

He rings a hand-sized, _manieristica_ style bell on a full circle made of black walnut wood. This, too, has an intricately carved wooden headstock, this time just a sample of the antlers in miniature, with a sliding stay. The sally of the braided pull rope is made of thick wool, dyed black.

The door opens at its dulcet tones, cutting the stag in half. Hannibal recognizes the messenger from yesterday, a youth with curly, dirty blonde hair. He is wearing the same cap, an interesting if unadorned piece in mauve. Hannibal greets him with a slight bow after he is greeted by a deep one.

“I am the painter, Hannibal Lector. I have come at the behest of Signore Graham,” Hannibal tells him. “For a sketch.”

The youth looks nervous. He must be new, Hannibal decides, as he is directed without much ado into the villa.

The black walnut wood carries into the beams in the ceiling of the reception, as does the marble underfoot. The leather soles of his shoes make a pleasant slapping sound against this material as he follows the page through the residence, throwing curious glances at what he can, despite the quick pace of the youth’s legs. He sees some austerity, offset always by pops of bold opulence—a _lettuccio_ bench with mythic flora and fauna carvings on its arms, or the odd silk brocade drapery. This is a very different residence than the simplicity and necessity of his own, or the cluttered, monied ordinariness of his former patron de Reviello’s. Everything has its place here, and its place will never be threatened. A lowering, as if from a cornered beast, can almost reach one’s ears.

Hannibal blinks at this thought, and realizes he is being led to the eastern part of the villa. The page stops abruptly before a set of black walnut wood French doors, and Hannibal takes care to not run straight into the youth. The doors, curved at the upper edges, have deep inner panel etchings reminiscent of gothic architectural columns, intertwining across the surface in elegant arches, and throw thin, mysterious shadows against one another.

The page raps upon its surface with his milk-white knuckles, stealing a glance over his shoulder at Hannibal. He thinks perhaps his unusual height frightens the boy—or maybe something else, entirely.

Another manservant on the inside pulls these two doors open, blocking the view into the chamber beyond. His middling-heighted body is clothed in a matching, yet ungaudy, doublet and tunic. The man’s face has a hale dryness to it, with a narrowly arched brow and delicate cliff of cheekbone. His black hair, streaked grey, is cropped short, and his age rests only a few years older than Hannibal’s. He is not handsome, and yet not plain—distinguished, for his post. As Hannibal searches his face, a spark of something like recognition crosses the man’s features. Hannibal sets his mouth quizzically at this reaction, but the page is addressing the man before he can say a word.

“Hannibal Lector for Signore Graham.”

The manservant steps aside, averting his eyes and taking with them whatever question Hannibal had hoped to puzzle out.

If the rest of the villa is the bones of the body, then this room is its beating heart. In the center a four-poster bed sits on a platform, hung with a layer of dense, blood-red velvet curtains on the outer and a gauzy layer of almost white, lilac georgette curtains on the inner—it reminds Hannibal of tearing into a carcass, the lining between the meat and organs found in many mammals. There are various feather mattresses on the floor for dogs, of which Hannibal spots several. Each of a differing breed and nestled among the sumptuous sheets of the bed, which are heavy undyed linen with delicate elements of embroidery at their edges.

The man is young, younger than he is by several years—this surprises Hannibal, first. That he is in bed to receive visitors is the second surprise, still clothed as he is in loose silk night things, despite being adorned with fine silver jewelry: from wide-banded rings on the thumbs and right forefinger, to thinner, stacked bands featuring sparkling wine-red garnets on the left middle and little fingers. Around his pale neck with its stark clavicles casting deep purple shadows, hangs a long, rope-style chain on which a surprisingly primitive _mano figa_ hand pendant made of bone dangles.

The third surprise is this: that the younger man’s eyes are chimeral, one moment blue and the next green. Hannibal enters the room and bows, never taking his own eyes from the arresting mysticism in their opaque gaze. The Signore’s curly head of rich brown hair frames an angular jaw and high cheekbones, with scruffy hollows sloped into the cheeks there, their glassy skin. The lips are another thing, entirely—pallid pink, wide yet full for a man’s—crowning a face at once feminine and masculine.

“Hello, Signore Graham. Thank you for your invitation.”

The younger man does not speak for a moment, and instead a small tremor runs through that full pout. _Is this a shy boy?_ Hannibal wonders, relaxed in the space despite its newness, its opulence, its strange, echoey silence. Then a darkly melic voice exits, cold and clipped.

“Yes. Set down your tools there, Painter.”

 _Arrogant._ The letter suggested as much, Hannibal recalls. He stands expertly still, hands clasped behind his back, though he knows the other man is expecting him to flash into motion at his behest, perhaps even stumble a bit as he bends in his haste to gather up his charcoal and tools. Hannibal has all too keenly experienced this type of patron since he was a youth and studying in Utrecht during his apprenticeship to van Honthorst: from the lecherous and lewd, to the arrogant and abusive, emboldened as they were by their staggering wealth. He has found that his politeness tends to be exacerbated by their rudeness, becomes something coldly, inwardly violent until it reaches a fine crescendo of outward violence—but this man several years his junior does not elicit the same reaction in this moment. In fact, Hannibal is at once entirely unsure what kind of reaction raises in him, now. He pauses consciously to record it, study it, as one would watch a beautiful bird take flight from a distance. He watches the bird as though watching his own psyche: something separate from himself.

He realizes he wants to play whatever game this is.

It is then that Hannibal moves with a slight, obliging bow, taking his eyes from the other man for the first time since stepping into the room. He follows where one fine finger had pointed, a tall table set next to a spindle-legged chair. He feels surrounded by a black walnut forest, there are so many intricate, beautiful pieces of furniture wrought from the trees in this room.

Hannibal sets his worn leather pouch onto the table’s mirror-varnished surface, unfastening it to bring forth vine charcoal, as well as black and white chalk. Instead of showing his prized sketchbook to a stranger, Hannibal thought it better to bring the typical lime-soaked pig skin vellum to sketch with today. More professional, he thought—and the feeling of it satisfying underneath his fingertips, more so than paper alone could achieve.

He unfurls the material carefully, pinning it to the thin, waxed wood plank he has brought by each of its four corners. As he has turned his back on the Signore to do so, he is now acutely aware of the manservant’s presence near the closed double doors. Though he appears aloof, Hannibal feels a predatory tingle run through him as if the man were staring him down in challenge. This contrasts the Signore’s refined boldness, reserved yet blatant in his stare as Hannibal takes his time, unbothered—amused, even, at this unusual youth and his cold attention.

“Been a patron of the arts for long, have you, Signore Graham?”

“Yes. My family has.”

The second sentence brings more nuance to the flavor of this young man’s predisposition. It is not impolite, Hannibal decides—definitively clipped, with a coolness that suggests the arrogance is born of boredom with most other people. The boy is not shy: he is unbelievably bored.

“And your family—How long have they been here, in Florence? Forgive me, but I do not believe I have met any.”

Hannibal turns to once again take the man’s presence in, placing his vellum down on the table to instead devote his focus toward the burgeoning conversation.

“You wouldn’t have,” the Signore replies. “They’re all dead.”

 _An orphan_. A spark goes off in Hannibal’s mind. This boy of no more than thirty years and no less than twenty-five, is not merely bored—he is in exquisite pain. He is suffering even as he sits there amongst his dogs and his fine things, and remains acutely, highly protective over his body, his environment. He yearns for boredom, yet this is his reality: Not wishing to suffer any longer. Angry that he still is. Yes, a deep, ancient anger: directed inward at himself, and directed outward at others. No room in the bone arena of his skull for the things he loves.

What has he done? Hannibal wonders. What was he forced to do? What has he failed to forgive himself for?

Something inside Hannibal softens at the thought.

“I am sorry to hear that.”

Hannibal makes the typical motion of crossing himself, customary when speaking of death. The Signore tilts his chin up slightly in response, sniffing. Now it is the younger man’s turn to take his eyes away.

Dallying slightly in this moment, savoring it, Hannibal takes a moment before he allows this lapse to move his gaze around the rest of the room. Adjacent to the bed is a large upright wardrobe, no doubt housing many more fine silk bedclothes, and doublets, and cloaks. Hannibal finds himself wishing to rip open the doors by their polished knobs and force the younger man to try every single thing on—find one that encapsulates him in this moment.

He pulls subtly away from this desire, letting it simmer instead of boil inside. He focuses on the fireplace, opposite the foot of the bed. Its mantel is wrought of the same dark wood, and has a few stray silver candleholders, all molded over with wax drippings to become permanent fixtures, now, on the mantel’s surface. Then, above these, hanging both propitiously and sinisterly, is a single painting: _Sacrifice of Isaac_ by Caravaggio.

Young brown-haired Isaac is held prostrate with his cheek forced against a rock, and threatened by his father, Abraham’s, blade, whose attention is arrested by an angel-made-material as the sacrificial ram looks anxiously on. A holy offering, the lithe body of the son, whose mouth is open in holy protestation, holy fear, holy confusion. What curses, what prayers exit his full lips? Does he beg his father to stray from this God-ordained decision, or does he merely lament the ending to his short life, so wholly unlived? Far more interesting, Hannibal thinks, is the possibility of vileness, the possibility of the youth to break free from his father’s grip—retaliate. Blood, bone, flesh. Human honesty.

In the background, a view almost like south Florence from the banks of the Arno, and the hill upon which the basilica, and Villa della Osso Bianche, sits, is painted.

“Have you had the good fortune of seeing _Amor Victorious_?” Hannibal asks eventually, as if inquiring about the weather that day. “They say he used the same model for Isaac—a boy then, and, here, a young man. That it was a veiled threat from Caravaggio to the model, to paint him as a near sacrifice so indelicately handled.”

“No,” Will replies, and Hannibal is not sure which aspect of what he just said the man is denying. He does not embellish the statement, and Hannibal merely tweaks the corner of his mouth, unseen, in response.

“You mentioned enjoying the way I painted beasts in your summons,” Hannibal continues. “Are these hounds the reason you sought me out?”

Will’s right hand runs absently through the fur of one nearest to him, a golden-brown beast with a silken, plumed tail resembling an ostrich feather. Hannibal’s eyes move from one dog to the next, taking them in in all their variations—the only commonalities between them being that they are exquisitely groomed, well-mannered, and radiant with health.

“They are,” Will responds simply. “They will be in the portrait with me.”

 _Oh, they will?_ Hannibal has the desire to quip, the thought curling his mouth into a private smile.

“And the composition—where will you be placed, among your hounds?”

Will’s chimeral eyes do not move in the slightest. “My placement? You are looking at it, of course.” His clipped tone is tempered by hot impatience, now. “So, sketch, Painter.”

For one long moment, Hannibal does not move. He wants to lick his teeth, each strong calcium structure, in order to savor the deliciousness of this boy’s beautiful fury and the creation that it could fuel. He eventually takes a few elegant, measured steps toward his supplies.

The first sketch he contrives is one in jest, he knows from the start. Spurred on by the young man’s impatience, his momentary lapse and show of weakness, forces his hand in this matter—almost as if by divine decree. The composition is all wrong—from the angle he chooses, to the origin of light, but he carries on for a few moments as if only to stare at the finer details there in the bed in front of him.

Abruptly, he wipes a cloth over the surface of the vellum. Some kind of vexation crosses Will’s brow.

“Do you, by chance, have a step ladder? I would prefer a higher angle on you.”

Will’s eye imperceptibly twitches, yet he calls to his manservant.

“Lazzaro, a ladder.”

Eventually one is brought in—undoubtedly from the orchard and a paltry thing, exceedingly ordinary in the space. Hannibal perches himself calmly atop of it, all its scant two yards of height, and takes a new attempt at this angle.

Still, though, it is in jest. He takes the time to ponder the younger man’s features during this farce, collecting them into his mind as one would hunt morel mushrooms. He finds that by the time he is wiping the charcoal from the surface of the vellum for a second time, he can faithfully recreate that face hovering, fiercely, before him from merely memory—the two times practice enough. One angle natural, boring—the other angle from above, eyes tilted up to bore into the onlookers with a reticent kind of supplication. Hannibal admits he likes this one more, this upper hand, even as he scours it from existence.

Finally, he begins to take the task seriously.

The hounds are simple enough to capture, despite their infinite array of personalities—he can see those clearly, their personalities, as varied and commonplace as they are in comparison to their owner. He thinks he passes several faces a day on the streets of Florence that could accurately encapsulate the dogs before him, now.

But for some reason, during this third trial, the Signore Graham’s face eludes him. He has chosen his seat as the third rung of the ladder, putting himself at a slight de-elevation to the younger man on his bed on its platform. He thinks this will be complimentary, yet not panderingly so: he thinks, with creative license, he will be able to capture correctly the fascinating, interior pain that morphs this man’s face into something ethereal, something immaterial and immortal in its youth.

The sharp jaw flows from his charcoal, the highlight on the inner crease of the eye captured by his white chalk. But the eyes, the eyes themselves escape him. He looks into them for quite some time as Will sits perfectly still, sits with the same expression on his face well into the afternoon. The man has not moved this whole time, while Hannibal joked and jested at his expense simply to see the pretty vexation that crossed these now indeterminable features.

As he stares, the young man’s smooth brow abruptly knits and he breaks out in a sweat: his first movement. A breath catches in Hannibal’s throat—a thrill at events to come.

Then, the second movement: Will is calling out for Lazzaro with finely wrought panic in his throat. This is just before the third movement: his limbs and shoulders locking up as if in rigor.

And that is when Will starts to seize. Hannibal has only seen this ailment at work once before, in a child of de Reviello’s niece. He watches with heightened curiosity as Lazzaro strides across the room, moving efficiently and quickly. The convulsions possess Will’s pale body entire, those chimeral eyes rolling back to reveal white. Lazzaro guides his Signore expertly to the surface of the mattress, on his side, keeping him steady. The dogs whine, quietly, some sniffing at Will and looking at Lazzaro with concern, while others move to lay their bodyweights entire upon Will’s limbs.

The fit passes within thirty seconds, and Lazzaro takes a long look at Hannibal where he stands, where he had been watching this occur with little emotion other than rapt interest on his face.

“You must take your leave.” The acute absence of ‘signore’ speaks to an underlying hostility. Hannibal can taste this like a lemon’s bitterness on his tongue. “Signore Graham will not be able to see anyone until the morrow.”

Hannibal places the unfinished vellum on top of the high table, silently obliging.

…

Later that evening at _Tabacchi Dorato_ , his friends Paolo and Zanetta have many questions about his foray into possible employment. He does his best to match their excitement, once again pouring wine across his tongue that had been won through his sketchbook. But he finds it difficult—finds himself in an unexpected reverie carrying forward through time from the advent of Signore Graham’s seizure.

If he is hired, will the task take longer than the typical two months? Will he be forced out of the room at every advent of these seizures? How often do they occur—how often is the boy plagued? Hannibal finds himself full of questions that quiet him inwardly, to the point of outward silence.

Finally, Zanetta asks about his looks. Hannibal knows she could care less about this rich stranger’s features—but does so to vex Paolo, which is one of her favorite pastimes.

“So, is he handsome?”

Hannibal’s eyes catch her expression in the firelight. He feels something roil to the surface of his face, and does his best to suppress it. The youth’s visage burns in his mind’s eye.

“I don’t rightly know,” Hannibal begins, after swallowing a hearty mouthful of wine. “He is somehow more than simply that. And he is young. Younger than us, Paolo.”

Paolo snorts into his glass, and Zanetta delights in this answer as well as Paolo’s response.

“Do you have the sketch? Or a trial that was left unfinished?”

Hannibal brings his glass to his lips, recalling the way that fine brow knit into pain at the onset of his body’s bedevilment. Overloaded, a feeling—a nature—entirely too much for the slimness of his body to handle. Hannibal resists a shiver that runs through him.

“No, unfortunately—but surely I could recreate it, here, now.”

Zanetta claps, her raven hair thrown about her bared shoulders by the movement. “Oh, please—do!”

Paolo rolls his eyes, sinking, displeased, into his wine cup. Hannibal merely chuckles at his friend’s sullenness, too intent on his desire to bring forth life from his sketchbook’s paper to pay much attention to Paolo’s theatrical displeasure. Unlike the sketch which will last well past this night, Hannibal knows Paolo’s malcontent will blow over as a breeze across the bay.

As he sketches, charcoal blackening his fingertips, Hannibal wonders if the young patron of the arts will allow him, should he be hired for the job, to stay in the room with him while he is passed out from the rigors of his condition. Will he be allowed to loom over the body, supine in its finery, to look on over its efforts to recover and fight its nature as he mixes pigments placidly against his painter’s palette? Right now, he can imagine no other greater joy in life, than this indulgent fantasy.

As the young man’s face emerges from his mind’s eye, and he entertains this dark desire, this sick hope, to once again see Will in the throes of his seizures, an inspiration burns in him—something he has not felt in quite a long time.

He hands the rough sketch to Zanetta after twenty or thirty minutes have passed. The prostitute, usually so tired of men in their unending ordinariness and desires, genuinely gasps.

“Of course he is a romantic—a playboy—with many female admirers. Just look at his hair, his eyes,” she says.

But Hannibal bites his tongue about this, unsure exactly how much the younger man’s illness impedes his ability to carry out a normal life. Hannibal had not thought of the other man this way, once, while in his company. Instead, he imagines Will there in Villa della Osso Bianche like a bird in a gilded bone cage, treated too delicately by the hands around him, when there is such a ferocity, a force of nature in him, that dwells just beneath the surface.

At the end of the night, Hannibal returns to his hovel, and Gio is gone. But in his place, a dead songbird on the table.

A gift.


	3. Villa della Osso Bianche pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: a trans character is misgendered before it is clear she is trans. It is not purposeful/malicious. Also a passing mention of child abuse, just a few words, nothing graphic.

The mauve cap floats distantly in front of Hannibal as he hazily flanks the messenger up the hill to Villa della Osso Bianche. A full day has passed, in which Hannibal did not leave his room for long in case the messenger came for him with word from the sick Signore. Gio left and returned as he pleased during this time, and Hannibal mostly sat at his small table in his rickety chair reading a small, hand transcribed compendium of John Milton’s poetry which he had copied from de Reviello’s library. He produced occasional chalk changes to the quick sketch made to elucidate Will’s face to his friends, drawing forward the more subtle quirks of the man’s features from pure memory.

Zanetta stopped by sometime before sunset, dressed for work. She passed him a large bottle, saying, “Compliments of Paolo and I. Hope you’re holding up, Hanni.” She saw the sketch laid plainly against his table, then kissed him fondly on his cheek.

Was he already so forlorn?

The carved black walnut stag cuts in half once more, main doors to the villa opening as the air trades thick incense for coolness in the depths of the marble hall. The page has not uttered a word to him since their departure from Hannibal’s hovel, and does not say anything now.

Signore Graham is in bed, nothing changed except for his clothes and jewelry. Hannibal wonders if this is how it will be from now until the end of the project—already making the bold assumption he will win the Signore’s favor and be chosen for this endeavor, be able to keep showing up day in and day out to witness the nuances presented so freely in front of him, now.

The young man wears a silk shirt in an eggshell color, with a warm undertone of the palest yellow in its rich, light-reflecting fibers. This is offset brilliantly by a long string of thumbnail-sized Mexican fire opals wrapped around his neck, encased as they are, shining, in their egg-like matrixes, all at once red-orange and green in a spotted harlequin pattern. Still amongst them is the silver rope chain and _mano figa_ , the point of the thumb through the first and second fingers looking somehow sharper than it had before.

“Hello, Signore Graham,” Hannibal greets the man with a small, polite smile. This expression is indulgent and unnecessary, and Will physically bristles at its appearance.

“Hello, Painter.”

“Feeling better, today?” Hannibal holds his arms behind his back, fingers intertwined. He sees that his vellum is laid where he left it against the tall table’s gleaming surface, and the rustic step ladder is still in the middle of the room. His eyebrow tweaks at this, unsure if it is an innocent, intentional consideration, or a jab much like the way he had jabbed Will by requesting it two days before. As if Hannibal were fit only to utilize this weatherworn essential.

He notices that the spindle-legged chair is missing from beside the table.

He withdraws his gaze from this and finds it placed on Lazzaro, standing obliquely as he does in the corner of the room, close to the door. Without meeting his gaze, the older man’s mouth curls into a callous, knowing smile.

A jab, then.

“I have your preferred seat prepared,” Signore Graham lilts coldly, ignoring the question. Hannibal thinks he is much in the habit of pretending nothing is wrong with him to strangers, to the point of self-alienation through these cruel disallowances. “Finish your sketch, so we can settle this matter of your employment, and whether that is something I’d like to undertake, or not.”

Hannibal is forced to let the dream of painting the Signore in the throes of his illness wither, slightly—but not entirely. He decides to hold onto it, take it out to turn it in his hand from time to time. But for now, he buries it in his chest as one plants a bulb, only to have it spring up several months later through hoarfrost and frozen ground.

At this thought, Hannibal takes a breath in silently, letting the air fill his chest and nose with fragrance from the late-winter boughs burning in the fireplace—pine, and juniper. Once more he pulls the leather bag from his back and takes forth from it his charcoal and chalk.

He takes a seat on the ladder, aware that its presence irks him, but also aware that the rudeness of it is borne from the young man’s innermost need to assert he is well. Hannibal understands, and sits with perfect posture upon the third rung, once more sinking into the scene in front of him.

Will’s hand rests on another dog, this time, and Hannibal thinks that maybe it was not possible to arrange the beasts in the same positions they were in two days prior, despite being well-trained. The one by him today is small and spotted, white, with large black patches over his sausage body and flopping ears. His long snout pushes, invariably, up, impatiently, into Will’s palm. Hannibal can imagine that unlike the one with the plumed tail, this beast is keener on demanding his owner’s love and attention. Spoiled, perhaps. Indulged. Accommodated.

Hannibal does not need to look up to the face in front of him but does so anyway. The longer he stares the more silent signals he can pick out of the man’s visage. There is something haunted about it, some shadowy thing that the young man dares not acknowledge, but touches him nonetheless. It is there in the edge of his jaw, at the fullest point of his pout, pulling at the edge of the eyes. Hannibal realizes that this man is unwell, still. The seizures take from his energy and his general health, deeply.

The sketch meets his standards by early afternoon, and he realizes many minutes of silence have passed without his conscious awareness that they have done so—too wrapped up in the unwavering stare from the young man amongst his sheets to concern himself with anything else. It is similar to how he feels in _Tabacchi Dorato_ , where the world goes vacuum quiet and then spills back in on itself once he has accurately brought forth a face from a flat page. Only different, this time, in front of Will.

It is not the world going silent around his mind, but rather his mind going silent in the young man’s world.

With a gentle clearing of his throat, Hannibal returns his charcoals and chalks to the worn leather bag on the surface of the table, being careful not to brush the vellum as he lays it nearby.

“I believe I’ve finished,” he says after a moment, speaking partially over his shoulder. “Where would you like it?”

Hannibal does not hear a response for a long moment, so he turns at the sound of soft rustling. Will is bringing himself up from his bed, drawing back his sheets from his legs and hips so he may move to stand. He descends the few stairs leading up to the platform of his bed, and the air seems to shift around him. He holds onto one pillar of the four-poster for balance as he walks forward—his pants silken, and matching his top, his feet bare save for three thin silver rings around his left index toe.

Hannibal feels rather frozen as the man approaches, realizing distantly that this is the first time he has stood in Hannibal’s presence despite the almost eight hours they have shared together. He moves like a silent liquid in the space, and, soon, is close enough to touch.

He extends a slim hand but says nothing. Hannibal reaches for the vellum on the board, passing it to him. Will’s back immediately turns, and he holds the sketch up against the scene of his own bed, his dogs alert to their owner’s absence. Will looks from the bed to the sketch, and Hannibal studies the back of his neck, the way his fine curls skim the pale nape just above the collar of his bed shirt. He studies the shell of the ear, its shadows from this angle. He is taller than the younger man by half a hand’s length, and cannot resist the almost gravitational pull that the other’s body makes. He is leaning in as Will studies the sketch in the early afternoon light. His hair oil is simultaneously sweet and sultry, and Hannibal inhales deeply.

“Did you just… smell me?”

Will’s eyes are flashing to his. From the corner, Lazzaro coughs—a polite warning. Hannibal rips his eyes from Will’s and sets them on the manservant but does not back away from Will. Instead, he shifts the corner of his mouth in a bemused smile, not quite closing his mouth as his eyes slip back to Will’s.

“Yes,” he murmurs, hoping his voice is just quiet enough to elude Lazzaro’s ears. “Your hair oil—It is amber musk, and… phosphorous, burning.”

Will swallows, the protuberance of his Adam’s apple bobbing in a nervous reflex. It disappears up into his mouth then cannonballs down, before coming to rest mid-throat. Will’s chimeral eyes shift.

“Keep your distance, Painter,” he demands. “Go.”

Hannibal obliges and puts a few feet between them, secluding himself. Will watches him icily, ensuring he is far enough away, then turns back to observing the sketch and his room.

As he does so, a knock sounds on the doors. Lazzaro moves to open them, arms spreading wide, then steps aside to allow a cart to be wheeled in. The woman pushing it is in a heavy linen apron, her hair cropped close and wide brown eyes feline-tilted at the edges. Her brown lips give way to deep red on the inner, and staggeringly straight, even teeth.

The cart she pushes contains a small collection of dishes, including cockles with orange peels, oiled artichoke hearts, white bread cut into thick wedges and still steaming, and a watered-down chianti that fills the room with the strong smell of anise and other mixed spice.

“ _Buongiorno_ , Signore Graham,” the woman greets Will, bringing the cart around the foot of his bed.

“Ottavia, _salve_ ,” Will says, and Hannibal can tell immediately the respect he has for the woman. He begins to walk toward the cart, vellum plank still in hand, and makes a lazy gesture back in Hannibal’s direction.

“The Painter, Signore Hannibal Lector. Painter, the chef Signora Ottavia.”

Ottavia’s eyes settle on Hannibal’s own. She bows easily, a gesture that Hannibal returns.

“Has Tommaso eaten?” Will is asking Ottavia, and her deep eyes return once more to his.

“Yes,” Ottavia responds with a slight laugh. “Here is what she has left behind for you.”

It is the first time Hannibal has seen Will’s lips move in such a way—he is smiling, moving around three glasses amongst the dishes and then pouring wine into each.

“And, you too, I trust?”

Ottavia pulls her lips back over her teeth. “You do trust.”

“Wine?”

Ottavia shakes her head. “ _No, ma grazie_.”

Will motions to Lazzaro, who comes to the cart and takes a glass in his rough hand, then a plate. Then Will is holding out the third glass behind him, almost an afterthought, as he says, “Painter.”

Hannibal steps forward to take the glass. Almost immediately, hand bereft, Will lazily selects a round of honeyed carrot on his way back to his bed, popping it in his mouth without so much as a backward glance. He works his jaw with his pillowy lips sealed pertly, wine in one hand and his other hand still holding Hannibal’s sketch. Hannibal is surprised at the root vegetable being on the menu of a wealthy man, and that he would choose it above the other, finer foods.

Not knowing what to do, Hannibal swirls the wine in his glass. Next to him, Ottavia throws a sympathetic look that is also more than halfway amused. He brings the glass to his nose, sniffs, before thoughtfully letting a dram wash over his tongue and down his throat. His eyes do not leave Will’s form in bed—Will, who is still studying his sketch with a particular, quizzical lilt in his eyebrow.

After a quiet, pensive minute passes in which Lazzaro has returned to his corner and is using his fingers to lift Ottavia’s fine food into his mustachioed mouth, the Signore finally looks back up at Hannibal.

“We will draft a contract. Two months’ residence here, at Villa della Osso Bianche, while in my employ.” Will takes a long drink, then brings the stemware back to his lap. “You’ll be given a room and free range of the grounds, including a portion of what Ottavia is making that day at each meal.” By now the chef is making her exit from the room, leaving the cart. “Your materials will be paid in full, and your salary fifty florins.”

Hannibal feels his stomach tighten in surprise at this outrageous number, as the double doors to Will’s room snap shut. He could live for years in sesto Oltrarno on such a wage.

He covers this reaction with an airy, “My materials, Signore?” For it is unusual—the artist is expected to cover these costs in most all cases.

“Yes. I have many, specific ideas about the pigments you should use. Some of them are… prohibitive in cost, for a painter.”

Hannibal’s eyes narrow imperceptibly, and he sets his glass down, moves back toward the center of the room and the step ladder. He takes a seat on this thing meant to goad him, and feels almost as if this is some kind of street con he’s entering, like a green boy lured in by a particularly unusual sweet.

“I will, of course, expect to have my nights off in the city,” Hannibal claims, almost indolently, watching carefully for the reaction of the Signore.

“As long as you are never late when you’re expected to work in the morning,” the younger man replies crisply. “Keeping a schedule helps steady my—illness.”

Hannibal takes this response in measure, sure to not upset the young man by being too forthcoming about his desire to learn more about what, exactly, happens to his body in the throes of this illness. As he pauses to form his words into something delicately wrought, Will instead jumps back into the conversation and Hannibal is surprised by the unexpected edge of anticipation held in his throat.

“So, will you?” His chimeral eyes are shining, shifting from blue to green to grey.

Hannibal’s brow furrows despite himself. He finds his chest sinking in on itself in exquisite pain at the realization that though the young man may be spiny, and full of thorns, there is some shared kinship here, in their chance encounter across time. For Will to acknowledge that this man who has seen him ill within their first hours of meeting may not want to pull thorns from his skin every morning is something Hannibal takes to heart. He realizes he is reflecting that vulnerability like a silver mirror with his earnest interest in the young man, so unexperienced the other is with such a thing shown by strangers. Actively resistant to it or not, Hannibal believes he can play along for two months, if just two months means he may get to quench the curiosity burning so strongly within him, now.

“ _Sì,_ Signore Graham,” Hannibal answers, the sound of his own voice foreign to him as he sinks into a fleeting level of familiarity with the regal man. “I will.”

…

He does not see much of Will over the two days, later that week, that it takes to set up his new space in the Villa della Osso Bianche. His room is on the west side of the building, opposite to and far from Will’s and nearest to the garden. In fact, his wide window that lets in the golden evening light opens up directly into the orchard, so close that he thinks he will be able to pluck quince straight from the boughs in a months’ time, while still standing firmly within this room.

The room itself is austere but full of light, with a dark walnut wood cross hanging on the off-white plaster wall across from the window to the garden. The trim is also in walnut wood, with several slender beams running across the length of the high ceiling. There is a simple but well-constructed feather mattress on a pallet-like lift, low to the ground; an easel, materials for stretching canvases, and a table and stool at which to mix paints. The only ornate item is the trunk at the end of the bed, which can be buckled closed by two thick leather belts running around its middle. It holds new and equally opulent clothing. Hannibal pulls something out as he is attempting to find a space for his one other shirt, fingertips running across the finery and quality of the make and weft.

“Is this mine?” he asks the page boy, who is helping him as well as overseeing this transition into the house. The boy brings down his eyes from a pointedly upward gaze, attempting not to eavesdrop or look too much into what exactly it is that Hannibal is moving in. He swallows in a nervous sort of way before replying.

“Yes.”

Hannibal waits for elaboration, and the boy stammers more than before.

“As an employee of Signore Graham, you are afforded as much clothing as you require. He does not spare any expense when it comes to your needs.”

Hannibal turns back to admire the fine shirt. “Does he do this with all his employees?”

“He does.”

“And—” Hannibal starts despite himself, pivoting on his knees against the floor to look back at the page. “Are you cared for, adequately? Do you want for anything, here?”

The page’s eyes go wide and he shakes his head. “I—” It seems he does not know how to answer. Hannibal wonders if the boy had had any other experience in his working life upon which to gauge this one, to provide a proper answer to his question.

“You have been terrified of me since the start,” Hannibal murmurs gently. “Why?”

The page bites his lip to quell his fear, ripping his eyes away from Hannibal’s calm face.

“I apologize.”

“That is fine, boy. At least tell me your name,” he requests, adding, “Please.”

The youth swallows once more before hoarsely vocalizing, “Tommaso.”

Hannibal stretches to not quite full height before extending his hand in greeting. “Hello, Tommaso. It is good to meet you.”

The youth takes his hand and Hannibal finds it cold and clammy against the warmth of his own.

“Do you feel safe, here?” he tries once more.

The youth is initially confused, surprised by this question. Then he nods with a fervor that does not do much to quell Hannibal’s curiosity nor concern. “Signore Graham, he—” But he shies his gaze away at the last moment, reticent to continue whatever admission he was close to making.

Hannibal makes himself as diminutive as possible, settling against the elaborate trunk. “Go on, Tommaso.”

The youth’s bright eyes flicker to his. His voice is barely a whisper. “Signore Graham doesn’t make me wear boy’s clothes, when I don’t want to. He buys me dresses I like from Venice, in the shops.”

Hannibal sinks this truth into his chest, digesting it. “And… you appreciate this?”

Tommaso nods fervently, again, the mauve cap staying quite firmly on top of the youth’s blonde, ringed curls. “My father—from whom Signore Graham bought me—would beat me for this, for borrowing my sisters’. But the Signore does not care. I only have to ask for what I require, and it is provided.”

Hannibal looks deeply into Tommaso’s face. “How long have you been working here?”

“Since my tenth birthday,” Tommaso replies. “Just over three years, now. I must go now, though, Signore Lecter. I have other duties—”

Hannibal waves his hand, sitting back. “Of course, of course. Thank you, Tommaso, for your candor.”

The page just nods hesitantly, and then scurries off to the next destination within the compound.

Hannibal continues to unpack his tools and inspirations, piling his scant things into their places in this new room. It is the first time he has been unaccompanied in the villa, and the feeling of this is quite disconcerting. He almost wants Tommaso to be there with shaking hands—or even Lazzaro, sending jagged stares in his direction from where he has tucked himself into a corner, observing.

Most of all he thinks of Will and his indeterminable, constantly changing gaze. He thinks of Lazzaro’s protectiveness over his Signore, and Tommaso’s shy, nervous praise of the young and wealthy man.

Eventually there is nothing left for him to do, and the encroaching heat of the late afternoon slips over his skin. He catches scent of the orchard just outside, and moves to sit in this window’s ledge to take in a moment of pensive silence, contemplate the next two months of work. He wonders distantly what expensive pigments Signore Graham wishes him to use, and how he will go about doing so. Not that he does not have experience with mixing various colors, but the chemistry of some more obscure ones may remain a mystery to him. De Reviello was modest as far as standards go, happy to stick to the status quo and not pursue more experimental routes to create a desired effect in his commissions. This was, actually, how Hannibal found himself succumbing to the crushing weight of mediocrity in the first place.

It does not happen in leagues but in steps, one after the other. Hannibal finds that this is true for many things.

As the sun crests the horizon, Ottavia passes by Hannibal’s doorway. She ducks her head inside with a noble knock of her knuckles against the jamb, bringing him from his reverie.

“I’ve got dinner going,” she tells him with her easy smile. “Anything you like, especially? Not for now, but for future reference?”

Hannibal gives her an even stare, and then eventually returns the smile. He can sense a comforting warmness in her, a wry sharpness that he appreciates deeply.

“No, not at all. I am quite looking forward to trying all your concoctions.”

Ottavia laughs. “That’s a right answer if I ever heard one,” she tells him, not unseriously. “Congratulations, by the way.”

Hannibal nods in thanks. “When shall I attend dinner? And, is it a compound affair?”

Ottavia’s smile dampens slightly at this. “Sometimes,” she admits. “But sometimes the Signore is too ill to join us.” She sounds like it is a loss to miss out on Will’s company, and Hannibal takes her at her word.

“And tonight?” he ventures, tone inquisitive and as light as is possible.

“Tonight, it will just be us,” Ottavia replies. “As is, more often than not, usual.”

Hannibal nods with understanding. The chef removes herself with a confirming slap, a familiar gesture, against the jamb of the room. _His_ room.

Hannibal looks once more out upon the just budding orchard, breathing in deeply the fresh air. In the distance the basilica’s bell rings once, twice, thrice—rings seven times, total, signaling the end of the day for all those wrapped warmly within the embrace of a working home.

Hannibal eventually draws himself from the sill in the almost-blue dusk, his stomach rumbling.

He thinks, maybe he will spend the night here instead of in the city.

You know.

Just to get used to it.


	4. Oil, Smoke, and Sugar

Hannibal is aware that he is not in his bed before even opening his eyes. The sounds of this house are different than those of his street in sesto Oltrarno; quieter, but not crypt-like as he would have first suspected. There are vibrant, common sounds of life here, as if he were buried deep into good earth. He can almost hear the trees growing just outside his window and feels interred, feels safe.

He stretches his back in a large yawn, standing to take another walk around this room that is, for now, his. He pushes some loose sketches aside from last night, the thick paper making a satisfying susurrus against one another. Then he straightens the lines of his vine charcoal and chalk, aligning them parallel to the edge of the broad worktable and to each other. His fingertips linger over the copied John Milton poems, and he considers briefly reading through some again before heading into the kitchen for breakfast.

Wrapping a bronze brocade banyan robe around his linen nightshirt, he instead bends to open the chest at the base of the bed. He thinks of going through the items there, but before he can do this, Tommaso is knocking on the door.

“ _Buongiorno_ , Signore Lecter,” she greets him timidly, her bow made shallow by anxiety. “The Signore has sent me to give you these.” She holds out a small silken purse and it jangles melodically. “For you to buy whatever supplies you need to begin your contract work.”

“ _Grazie_ ,” Hannibal replies, taking the purse gently. “Did the Signore say what supplies, specifically?”

Tommaso shifts on her feet. “Canvas, wash, and—” She pauses, biting her inner cheek. “ _Mi scusi_. He was not very specific.”

“That’s quite alright,” Hannibal responds with an even, soothing tone. “Thank you for letting me know.”

Tommaso gives him a longer look than usual, suggesting bravery. He is pleased to have made even just this modicum of progress with her, and tosses the silken purse lightly in his broad palm.

“Would it be possible to see the Signore to discuss this?”

Then her eyes go wide. “I don’t think—He is not—”

“Is he not well?” Hannibal tries, with concern lacing into the tone. Tommaso shakes her head, but Hannibal is unsure if she is refuting what he has said or confirming it. He does not have a chance to ask before she bows and turns to leave down the hall.

Full of unsated curiosity, Hannibal once more moves to rifle through the chest but decides on his own clothing. He is not sure if it is because of the second-hand anxiety welling in his ribcage, or for his own comforts and boundaries—nevertheless, he finds nothing suitable for the day. Nothing against Signore Graham’s taste, but—it is not in him to wear such fine things, with or without such an obviously bulging purse. So, he dresses in what Paolo had given him that first night, as always, and makes do.

He goes next to the scullery, taking large spiral-set stone steps down to the room. Its fires are all but ash, and Ottavia is nowhere to be seen, but Hannibal manages to put a thick slice of cheese on some mostly stale bread into his cheek before heading out into the world.

First, he takes a meandering route along the Arno, traversing its high waters across the bridge Ponte Vecchio. The brightly painted buildings across the stretch greet him with their merchants leaning out of shuttered windows, calling onto the humming crowds of possible patrons below. Hannibal ducks into the welcome dimness of one, a painter’s merchant he was made familiar with by de Reviello, and takes his cap from his head as he enters underneath the lintel. Smells of ash, an oily sweet-bitterness, and pine reach his nostrils instantly, and he is all at once comforted. It has been a long time since he found need of buying supplies for his commissions, and so the merchant stocking pigments does not seem to recognize him for a moment.

“How may I help you, Signore—Lecter?” the man says, recalling the unusual lines of his face mid-sentence. He brushes his hands against his smock and shakes Hannibal’s hand good-naturedly, putting his other hand to Hannibal’s elbow as he smiles a rough, chipped-tooth smile.

“ _Buongiorno_ , Martin. It has been too long.”

“Indeed, it has,” Martin responds, moving to lean against a studier portion of the shelving he has parceled around the small space. Hannibal’s eyes are more adjusted to the dimness and can see that the place remains relatively unchanged—pigments and brushes near the back, with rolls of canvas affixed on a mechanism to the stucco walls. “How are you, these days?”

“Fine,” Hannibal responds breezily. “Though, the Signore de Reviello has died. Perhaps two months ago, now.”

Martin crosses himself hastily, muttering briefly with uptilted eyes. “What became of you after that?”

Hannibal picks up a brush near to him, fine-tipped and made of soft sable marten hair. “I am doing a commission, for now. After that, I do not know,” Hannibal admits. This makes Martin laugh.

“You always land on your feet, don’t you?”

Hannibal grins, abashed. “I wish I had your certainty about my capabilities, Martin. Although it is always good to encounter others who have more faith in us than we do ourselves.”

Martin reveals, once more, his chipped teeth. He had once told Hannibal his crooked grin was from falling into a quarry excavation of cinnabar, used to make the pigment vermillion, where the blood that poured from him mixed quite well into the vibrant red growing in the ground there.

“Well, what can I do for you today?”

Hannibal clears his throat. “I’m in need of brushes,” he gestures with the one in his fingers, “linseed, umber wash, and—perhaps some canvas.”

Martin takes him around to all these things, piling each one onto the counter near the front of the store. At last they come to the canvas, and Hannibal runs his fingers over it with some disfavor.

“You’ve changed vendors,” he says to the man, not unaccusatory.

Martin’s face darkens by a shade. “You’re too good. Yes, I have. They’re proving to be not worth the investment.”

“Nothing left over of your old stock? The one I used to create _Il Guscio Del Seme_?”

Martin shakes his head. “No, no. This is all.”

Hannibal purses his lips. “I am sorry, Martin, but it won’t do. This project is—”

“Very important,” Martin cuts him off, walking away to ring up his other items. “Yes, yes. You think you are special? I’ve heard it all before.”

Hannibal cannot help the wry smile that crosses his face at the man’s easy exasperation. He says his goodbyes fondly, and takes the wrapped supplies to sling over his shoulder as he makes his way to sesto Oltrarno.

…

When he pushes in the heavy wooden door of his hovel, Hannibal is disappointed to find the absence of Gio within. He picks through some of his things, seeing if he will, in fact, require them during his tenure at Villa della Osso Bianche. He had not dared pack his sketchbook the first time around, in case there was the off chance that Signore Graham would require his things to be looked through before they were allowed on the grounds. After all, he is a stranger, as easy as that is for Hannibal to forget. He wants so badly to know the man, to be intimate with his psyche—intimate enough to paint him well, that the rest of their tenuous relationship is almost verily ignored by his waking mind.

The fact is that Will does not seem to like him very much. Or, at least, makes it known he does not. Why play at something like disdain unless one means it? This question knits Hannibal’s brows together as he makes a last sweep around his hovel, deciding after all to take the sketchbook with him. Mostly because, within it is the only likeness he has of the Signore—the only relatively true reflection of this inner self Hannibal so desperately wishes to uncover through the tools of his trade.

Thinking the noon sun has sunk deep enough into the sky that Paolo may be awake, Hannibal next crosses Piazza Torquato Tasso toward his friend’s rooms.

Paolo is blearily scrubbing a hand across his face as he opens his door. Just past it, Hannibal can see the same old mismatch of open trunks, finery, used dishes, and empty flagons of wine.

“Good morning, friend,” Hannibal greets the man warmly. They embrace, and Paolo reposes for a few moments within his arms. When Hannibal moves to pull away, the man protests.

“But—you are so warm,” he complains, holding fast. Hannibal laughs outright, continuing the embrace for a few moments more, or until his hungover friend decides to end the playful jest.

Eventually, Paolo does. “How goes it?” Hannibal asks as they separate.

Paolo gives him a long, dark look. “You are entirely too chipper,” he retorts, throwing his door open further and moving back to the interior of his rooms. Hannibal follows, closing the door behind him. He treads over the thick Persian carpets Paolo has laid every which way across the rushes, taking in their colors and patterns as if sat in a lecture of his master during his apprenticeship, with twenty other hopeful boys clamoring for the attention of their teacher.

Only here, now, the teacher is whoever had woven such intricate designs with wool and a loom.

Hannibal follows Paolo back into the furthest reaches of his home, passing a bedroom where Zanetta reposes, still unaware to the waking and turning world. Hannibal smiles at her pale form in the dimness, her closed almond eyes and flat nose delicately sunken into sleep.

“Have you eaten, Hanni?” Paolo is asking him, and Hannibal nods even though it has been some time since the hard cheese and bread from Ottavia’s pantry.

“I’m fine, friend. How are you?”

“Run through,” Paolo instantly replies, but not without a smirk. He pulls from a gauze-covered plate some dates and a potato, and sets to throwing the latter onto the meager fire built in his reception. “Remind me to never drink again.”

Hannibal stifles a snicker. “Remind you?” he questions with mirth. “Yes, Paolo. I will be sure to do so.”

But his friend only throws him a sallow look. “And what’s painted you in shades of yellow, today?”

Hannibal bites his lower lip, regarding his friend’s sunken yet undeniably handsome face. “I’ve got a contract.”

Paolo lights up at once. “With Signore Supercilious?”

Hannibal nods. “It was finalized a few days ago. I’ve only just spent the night.”

At this phrase, Paolo’s eyebrow tweaks. “Is it like that already, Hanni?”

But Hannibal waves his hand in front of his face. “No, no,” he counters, shifting his materials against his shoulder. “I am just afforded a room. But the household is… very different than de Reviello’s. I’m—inspired.” He says this last word like it is more of a question than of a statement. Paolo pokes the potato on the fire and chuckles.

“Perhaps you are even now in love, my friend?” he inquires, turning to take in Hannibal’s expression. “No—do not answer,” he counters himself, quickly. “Your eyes’ look is enough.”

Hannibal sinks into the gentleness of his friend’s words, and resists moving to embrace the man. Instead, he shuffles on the carpet, anxious to get back.

“I’ve just stopped by my own place, and Gio is nowhere to be seen,” Hannibal continues. “Would you do me a favor and keep an eye out for him? I know he is a street cat, though I cannot help but worry.”

Paolo tilts his head with a sense of propriety, and accommodation. “But of course,” he says easily. “I will have Zanetta and I on it like our lives are inexplicably tied by the Fates.”

“Which they are,” Hannibal quips in response. This elicits a grin from his tired friend.

“Yes, fine. Now, take your leave,” Paolo says stiffly, in jest. He prods further at the roasting potato. “Go and return to your… ivory tower.”

At this, Hannibal does cross the distance to place his lips placidly against his friend’s. “Thank you, Paolo,” he tells the man, who only nods in return. “I will see you very soon, I’m sure.”

On his way back to the hill on this southern side of the Arno, Hannibal makes a quick detour around the naval yards settled into the far reaches of the quarter. Up against the sands of the shore sit several ships, a dozen different marinas, and all the waxed wood that one could ever hope to see within an entire lifetime. Hannibal watches as a watery breeze passes over his face, dampening the soles of his feet and turning his toes quite cold as he stands and observes wave after wave lap at the shore.

There is a congregation of navy men, not unlike seagulls, here in this landlocked city. They all seem to enjoy themselves enough, close to their vessels—Hannibal has no problem studying their habits and outlines, filing the vision away for, as he often does, another sketch. It is important to him to pick up the sights and sounds of everyday things, for he never knows what will influence his art. Something locked away in the halls of his mind could be the next cohesive piece of a master work.

Not that he ever hopes of becoming a master—just, simply, someone who is proficient enough to feed themselves. That’s what he hopes for at the moment, at least.

That is when he spots it, near to some forgotten repair so late in the day: Furls and furls of sail canvas, laying in the sharp bedrock of the river. Trying his best at being unnoticeable, Hannibal makes his way over to the material. It is heavy and beautifully wrought, reminding him of Martin’s last vendor upon which some of his finer works were painted, before de Reviello succumbed to age and sickness.

Only this is not for sale, and not for him to take. He lets it slip from his fingers after a long moment, bringing himself up from the bedrock to return to the wooden marina above the sandbanks.

“ _Ei, ci sei!_ ” a voice calls out to him just as he is about to pivot on the boards of the marina and walk back to the hill overlooking the city. He pauses, squinting slightly into the crowd. “ _Si tu!_ ”

A man in uniform parts from his peers, crossing the distance between himself and Hannibal. Hannibal regards him curiously, as he steps up to him. He has a Romanesque, sandy complexion with dark eyes and wind chapped lips that form an—easy—expression as he also takes Hannibal in. “ _Buongiorno_.”

“ _Buongiorno_ ,” Hannibal returns the greeting with a bemused look. “How can I help you?”

“Saw you poking around the sails just now,” the sailor tells him. “What do you want with them?”

“Oh—I’m a painter,” Hannibal responds, simply. “Sail canvas is especially good for my work. And I am going to be painting something very important, soon.”

“If I get you some,” the man replies roguishly, licking his lips, “Will you paint me, sometime?”

Hannibal smirks at this brashness, delighted. “Perhaps.”

The navy man instructs him to wait there, his loosely gathered and fine hair flashing in the wind as he jogs off to retrieve a bolt of the fabric. Hannibal laughs to himself but stays put.

Eventually the sailor returns with a rolled armful of the stuff. He passes it off easily, then, before Hannibal can thank him properly, asks, “Where can I find you?”

Hannibal pauses for a moment, taking in the young man’s face. “ _Tabacchi Dorato_ ,” he finally says. “Not often, but sometimes.”

The sailor nods. “I know of it. I’ll see you, if it is meant to be.”

Hannibal chuckles at this. “Yes,” he agrees, beginning to walk off. “If.”

…

On his way home, he passes the villa and instead roams the grounds of the basilica. He finds a _cimitero_ and studies the graves for a long while, holding his materials close to his side as the sun sets.

…

The marble walk to the scullery takes him once more down a half flight of spiral stone steps. The surfaces are warm against his standing-chilled soles, and he immediately finds his shiver gone.

As he rounds the corner, he first sees Ottavia’s back, her strong shoulders stooped over the light beechwood counter as she moves something firmly with both her hands and arms in a repetitive motion. There is a fire burning in the open brick oven to her left, fueled by fragrant woods.

Hannibal pauses for a moment, here, suddenly aware of another presence. It is the Signore’s, and when Hannibal turns to regard him, he finds those light eyes already on him, hawkish from such a distance. He is sitting at the plain wood table next to Tommaso, who notices her Signore’s locked glance and follows it across the room. Then she is swiftly, quietly excusing herself, moving to dart out of the scullery’s opposite entrance, up some steps, into the garden.

Hannibal clears his throat politely and Ottavia turns at the sound.

“Signore Lecter,” she greets him, bowing. “You’re back.”

“I am, Signora.” He returns the gesture deeply, but quickly returns his eyes to Will’s.

“Have you eaten?”

Hannibal shakes his head, and Ottavia sets to making a plate for him. Hannibal walks over to the table as Will observes his every step, letting his supplies slip from his shoulder to lean against the floor, against the table leg.

“Signore Graham,” Hannibal finally intones, nodding in a half-bow, halfway sitting already. Ottavia puts a full plate in front of him, then brings him a glass and a bottle.

“Thank you,” he tells her graciously, and she bows once more before returning to her work. Hannibal reaches to pour the wine, and Will finally parts his full lips.

“You’ve acquired the necessary materials?” His tone is lazy, almost distracted, as he moves some scraps around on his plate. Hannibal begins to cut into the roasted pheasant, dipping it in a sweet sambuca preserve.

“I have,” Hannibal responds. He puts the meat in his mouth, savors it, swallows. “At least, the brushes and the umber, the linseed oil—and canvas from the naval yard.”

Will’s eyebrow tweaks as this, but the man says nothing.

“We have not spoken of when you will begin sitting for this portrait, Signore,” Hannibal ventures, holding a precise forkful of olive and liver compote near his plate. “Are these special pigments arriving soon, from wherever they are found?”

The distance between them is half of what it was in Will’s bedroom, and Hannibal can see with more immediacy those cold, chimeral eyes regarding him as Hannibal raises his fork past his lips.

“Yes, they are,” Will responds. “I expect most within the week, so we may begin with the outline tomorrow morning, if that is still your style.”

“It is,” Hannibal replies. He swears he can see a smirk lilting in the corner of the Signore’s mouth, but it is gone before he can be sure.

“I thought as much,” Will annotates crisply. He takes an oil-slick clove of garlic and presses it into his mouth with a single slim finger. “And do you habitually start with the face?”

Hannibal watches for a long moment the movement of the man’s jaw, listening to the sound of Ottavia rhythmically slapping a wet dough against the wooden surface of the counter.

“I can,” he posits. “If you wish.” To start with a subject’s face is most common because the rest of their characteristics can be filled in later, by surrogates. It means Hannibal would not have to be in front of Will to paint the shadows of his arms, or the folds of his clothes, or even the light against the pale expanse of his skin at his décolletage. All these things could be a composite of others—of anyone else.

A tenuous moment passes. The Signore finishes his garlic clove, and the motion of his throat swallowing causes Hannibal to swallow, too. He reaches for his wine, but is abruptly stopped by Will’s voice.

“No,” the other man lilts. “I believe the face should be last.”

Hannibal looks down at his plate to conceal his pleasure, lest such a brazen display of it change the Signore’s mind. As he stares, he finds nothing there he would rather have more of, than never to have to take his eyes off of Will.

There is a silence that stretches itself out over the distance between them, something that connects them, holds sway over them, that has a music of its own. Will could have long ago left, Hannibal thinks—could have left without a word, as he is no doubt wont to do. But still he sits there in the heat of the stone scullery, only planks of unfinished wood separating them.

Hannibal clears his throat, setting down his utensils and picking up his wine. “Tommaso,” he begins thoughtfully. “I—remind her of her father, don’t I?”

“Perhaps,” Will replies after a pause. “He is a tall man, too, and broad in the chest. He was not kind to her.”

Hannibal folds his brow, the sweet sorrow of sympathy filling his heart for the girl who is so meek around him.

“Will you be kind to her?”

The tone is a request, and Hannibal finds himself momentarily taken aback that the expression of the man who usually demands, is now beseeching and almost supplicative.

“Yes,” he replies. “Of course.”

Will’s nod is succinct, and then those eyes leave his. The slim man moves to stand, scooping the last of the preserves from his plate onto his finger, sticking his finger into his mouth. He exits the room silently, and Hannibal continues to watch for a long while after his form has disappeared from under the lintel.

“Signore Lecter,” Ottavia calls to him. Her voice brings him from his reverie, and he turns, smoothly, to face her.

“Yes, Signora?” he replies politely.

Ottavia regards him with a slight squint in her depthless eyes, running her dough- and flour-covered fingers over her linen apron front. “Don’t be offended,” she begins, “if Tommaso does not take to you right away. She is still not friendly with Lazzaro because he is a man, and, because—” Ottavia sighs. “Other character traits. Tell me,” the woman continues. “How closely do you follow Catholic doctrine?”

Hannibal’s eyebrow raises with some mirth. Ottavia puts her palms up with a grin.

“Perfect,” she says. “Well, that’s at least one point in your favor.”

“Which is not to say I do not ponder about God or spiritual matters,” Hannibal adds. He finishes his wine with a humble flourish. “But, yes. We are all made how we are made. It is wrong to deny this design, to not coax it forth from our souls. For it is God’s own design, no?”

Ottavia’s grin softens into a thoughtful smile. “That’s beautiful,” she tells him. “Yes… I agree.”

Hannibal returns her smile warmly. “And that is why you are an amazing chef. God so designed you, and you so coaxed it from your soul.”

Ottavia laughs, and Hannibal collects his dishes as well as the Signore’s, bringing them to the washing up bucket. Once there he rolls up his tunic sleeves, reaching for the small, bristled brush next to the bucket.

“You don’t have to,” Ottavia tells him as she realizes what he is doing.

“I insist,” Hannibal counters lightly. He scrapes off the leftovers into a separate container, save for the last garlic clove from the Signore’s plate—this he pops past his lips, letting it melt against his tongue, then starts to dunk each dish into the wash.

He and Ottavia spend the next minutes like this working at their tasks in the scullery, with all its comforting smells of oil, smoke, and sugar.


	5. When I consider how my light is spent…

It takes Hannibal an age to draw on his clothing in the morning. The night had been full of fitful sleep, and cold. Though warmth abounds now, his muscles are soaked through with chill and made stiff. Even the boiling, black-as-ink, bitter beverage that Ottavia prepares for him with sugar does little to shake the rigidity from his joints.

But Signore Graham is waiting on him, dependent upon his punctuality, so he does not dally for long in the scullery despite its many fires and hearths.

It is his good fortune that Will’s own fireplace is stoked to fullness, casting long, guttering flames’ shadows upon _Sacrifice of Isaac_ above it. Hannibal walks in past the ornate double doors of Will’s bedchamber, steadying the pace of his breath to take in this day’s iteration of the man’s character—his clothing, his jewelry, the fullness in the curl of his hair. Altogether the man is not much changed, and today, not as ornate—perhaps he has demurred a bit as this will be a portrait, beautiful and intricate, yet demanding from him identicality in appearance from day to day.

Hannibal has brought with him the stretched canvas, measuring approximately the length and width of a young woman. It is almost difficult for him to move through the doors by himself in his state, but manages with some hesitant propping to establish it upon one of the larger easels that Will has laid out for him in the corner of his opulent chambers.

His halting movements in wrangling this, setting up for this first day of work, must register dimly with Will, for it is not long before the man is asking him, “Are you quite alright?” with a delayed irritation.

Hannibal clears his throat quickly, tossing a linen rag over his shoulder and removing the lid of the umber wash. He mixes it with his first two fingers while placing an easy glance on Will. Will pets one of his dogs as always, moving his fingers through hound fur and ensuring that each is properly cared for, comfortable, before he fixes the minute things awry with his own wardrobe and dressing.

“Yes,” he responds resolutely. “I was up for quite a while.”

“Lazzaro,” Will is beginning to request when Hannibal’s stomach bottoms out. “Help the Painter situate his materials.”

Lazzaro, stood in the corner, begins to descend upon Hannibal’s place at the bottom of Will’s bed. He is wearing a rapier, Hannibal notices first—that his face is drawn, austere and hard is the next observation. He is unsure if this is due to the man’s natural predisposition, or an instant distaste for his presence. As Hannibal ponders this, the older man steps forward to fulfill his Signore’s wishes, laying rough hands on the finely wrought corners of Hannibal’s self-stretched canvas. Hannibal is made sour as the man’s unskilled touch makes purchase with the surface of his hard-won handiwork, and he immediately flashes his gaze to Will to let him know, exactly, how disappointed he is with this command.

Will’s breath visibly hitches at this look. “Well—” the man begins, silently motioning Lazzaro back to his post. “Painter—what do you—require?” Will finally asks, at a loss for any other corralling question or comment. Hannibal once again moves forward to right the awkward wrong of his beginning.

“Nothing,” he admits freely to the younger man. “Only a moment, Signore, and then I will be able to properly begin the fulfillment of our contract’s terms. Forgive me, but I slept stiffly. Still acclimating.”

Hannibal is aware of the unsolicited hardness that laces his voice but busies himself with his work instead of acknowledging it. The truth is he had sat up so late in bed with John Milton, too eager with thoughts of beginning today, that he could scarcely sleep. It is a welcome tiredness, though—one caused by thoughts of Will in rapture with his affliction, and the soft poetry of his features.

Though, he would never tell the younger man this truth.

Satisfied with the mix of umber, Hannibal withdraws his fingers and wipes them against the linen rag on his shoulder. He takes a broad brush and dips it into the solution, breath catching for just one moment as he stares at the pure, blank canvas.

 _‘Doth God exact day-labour, light-denied?  
_ _…They also serve who only stand and wait.’_

Hannibal’s eyes flash to Will’s—Will’s eyes that are shifting, and the younger man’s lithe body as still as a statue in bed. And then Hannibal is bringing the brush in thick, firm strokes against the canvas. A satisfying scratching emits from the bristle, and a slow creep of pleasure settles into Hannibal’s spine. He is suddenly very warm in the near-bake of the fireplace, and a bead of sweat moves from his hairline and down his neck.

It has begun.

The umber wash takes ten sublime minutes until it is acceptable in Hannibal’s eyes. Then, as it absorbs and sets, Hannibal is pacing a thin line into the floor at the foot of Will’s bed, considering the angles. His previous vellum has been laid against the tall table in the far corner behind him, but Hannibal does not consider consulting it now—he remembers it, all its lines, and wants to improve upon his original design. Fresh, new, he regards Will with a razor’s edge exactitude. And Will sits perfectly.

The scent of ash reaches his nose past the umber as he uses his fingers to hold his charcoal, press the broader lines into the canvas. He pulls, detail after detail, the features of Will’s face and body forth. A slow fever raises in him as he hooks the line of the jaw, floats the divot above the center of the lip, follows the denouement of the shoulder to the arm—like a liquid sea, tides controlled by the moon, so moves his hand. So flick his eyes, until he thinks he must have raised them to Will’s visage a thousand times—each time the same. The same vision that beats in past his skull as a fugue must, overlapped and overlaid, until Will’s details are all he can see.

Then there is a furrowing movement from one of the hounds, its paw raising to where Hannibal assumes is Will’s thigh underneath the sheet. This one’s face is white with an edge of caramel, the ears on it stood straight up as it tilts its head. Will looks down to meet its gaze, and with a silent communication between them begins to pick himself up out of bed.

Hannibal lowers his charcoal, feeling distinctly like he has been stopped from reaching for a particularly deep itch. He watches Will walk from his bed’s platform across the room to his wardrobe, pull from inside it a leather leash. The white beast follows at his heels, standing as still as a statue as Will bends to affix the leash to its collar. Lastly, he pulls forth a long coat, quilted and orpiment yellow with black fur trim, to throw on over his bedclothes. His feet, he leaves bare.

Hannibal swallows despite himself as Will passes. Their eyes briefly meet and Will nods, as if to say that he regrets this necessary, yet unprofessional, interruption, the dog leading by a tame distance of a few feet.

As Will strides out the double doors of his room and Lazzaro, throwing a last look at Hannibal with the ghost of a finger’s whisper of the handle of the rapier at his hip, follows the Signore out to the yard.

Hannibal turns back to the bed, suddenly vast in its emptiness—more accurately, its lack of Will’s enigmatic figure. The other hounds, momentarily attentive to their master’s leaving, now sigh and drop their heads back to their paws, back to the finery of the sheets.

As ever, Isaac looks on the entire chamber from the confines of his frame with an eternal cry.

Following Will’s directive from dinner the previous evening, Hannibal begins to lay the dogs’ lines into the canvas. He is at a loss of what to do now, alone in the room, and tries his best to ignore the ajar door to the wardrobe (which he so desperately wishes to inspect) by taking the opportunity to study each of the beasts’ faces. He leaves a space for the one that is missing, working diligently, and soon he can hear the rhythmic clip of dog nails on the marble outside Will’s door.

Lazzaro returns to his post just inside the door as Will strides back across the foot of his bed without a look, without a word. He unhooks the leash from the dog’s collar and slips the warm garment off his slim shoulders, his arms. Paying no mind to the return of Lazzaro’s coldly focused gaze, Hannibal is rapt to all these movements of Will’s. The utilitarian movements of hanging the leash and his coat; the small humanness of his ringed fingers running through his hair to bring those curls from his eyes.

The easel and canvas once again separate them as Will slides back into bed, emitting a small sigh as he settles back into pose, into place. Then his eyes lock on Hannibal’s, and Hannibal cannot help the small leap of muscle within his chest. Fullness settles back over his stiff shoulders as a mantle would, and he studies the small roses that have risen on Will’s cheeks from this exertion.

“It smells of rain,” the other man says, the words hanging heavy in the air. “I expect we’ll have a storm, soon.”

Hannibal allows his head to tilt ever so slightly at this comment, quizzical. Niceties such as discussions of the weather seemed beyond Will’s comfortability—at least, when addressing him. It makes Hannibal’s hand hitch as he raises it back to the canvas.

“And do you enjoy inclement weather?” he asks softly, curiously, using his ring finger to smudge from existence an ill-placed line before raising his eyes back to Will.

“The lightning is impressive on this hill,” Will replies, almost easily. “I suppose you shall see it at some point this spring.”

“And what of your hounds? Beasts typically do not appreciate such acts of God.”

Something whispers in Hannibal’s ear as he moves his eyes from the canvas to Will, and back again—something is not correct, and it tugs at him underneath the pleasure of this fine line lilting between them, this rare conversation.

Will’s eyes are bright, his voice enchanted. “They lean out the windows, waiting for it.”

Hannibal lets a small smile grace his lips, and that is when he spots it—an offending discontinuity between the canvas and how Will’s form appears in his bed now.

“Signore,” Hannibal begins. He motions with his charcoal-black fingertips to his own ear. “Your earring, it is—tangled.”

Will blinks before lifting a hesitant hand to his lobe, pinching, adjusting. He then lowers his hand, allowing Hannibal to see if it lines up with his design. This allowance raises a deep breath in Hannibal, but it is still not quite right.

“May I?”

Will almost jumps, and Hannibal can see his eyes move imperceptibly to the corner where Lazzaro stands before swallowing: all these movements soft, almost too fleeting to be noticed in the first place. Then Will’s eyes are boring into his as he nods, once.

Hannibal side-steps the easel, running his black fingertips over the flat surface of his tongue as a mother would do to wipe something from a child’s face. He uses the rag over his shoulder to remove the excess charcoal and the wet of his saliva, striding forward to cut completely the distance between them.

Will looms more prominently as he advances, but his even gait toward the younger man is incontrovertible. He steps up silently onto the bed’s tall platform, and, leaning forward by supporting his weight with one firm palm against the mattress, he reaches forward with his right hand, right into the nest of curls around Will’s perfect, pale earlobe. He moves the jewelry pierced through it with a delicate touch, knows that Lazzaro’s hand rests once more on his rapier, and then locks eyes with Will. There is a pin-point clarity isolating Will’s features thanks to being so close, and a subtle pull toward his mouth. The sheets are silken under his touch, smelling distinctly of dried lavender and other fragrant herbs, no doubt nestled among the feathers of the mattress. Hannibal softens, and in response, Will becomes stiff.

The dogs begin to shift uncomfortably at this, this stranger touching their master. Still Hannibal does not remove his hand, relishing this point of heat against his fingertip and thumb. Can feel the heat radiating from Will’s still-pink cheeks. When he does withdraw, he cannot resist lingering his digits through the fine strands of Will’s hair under the guise of separating it from the dove of peace charm dangling, there, from the silver ring.

“That’s better,” he murmurs, drinking in deeply Will’s wide-eyed face. Then, from above, a boom of thunder sounds.

Later, much later, even after the hours of sketching they complete that day, when Hannibal raises his knuckles to his nose, he can catch the scent of Will’s sultry-sweet hair oil from his skin.

…

That evening he moves once more among the shadows and derelicts of sesto Oltrarno. Puddles form in the uneven divots of the cobbled streets, night and wetness alike darkening the slate roofs and crowded building fronts claustrophobically lining each street.

On the near-side of Piazza Torquato Tasso, Hannibal knocks on Paolo’s door. He waits in the slow drizzle still leaking from the heavens, waits for a minute and knocks once more. He takes a hesitant step back and then decides to check at _Tabacchi Dorato_ , for Zanetta is habitually never home, and Hannibal believes after his visit yesterday that she may be living with Paolo, now.

He makes his way through the square, packed as it is with a surprising amount of people despite the weather, taking the street branching from the right of his own and following it down a slight decline consistent with the beginning of the edge of the Arno’s banks. He breathes easy, enjoying the damp smell lingering in the air through the ionic charge from earlier lightning as he avoids brushing shoulders with passersby.

Just hours ago, he had stood and watched the storm occur from Will’s bedroom window, breaking from work for another of Ottavia’s beautiful lunches. The onsetting scene outside had been obscured partially by the weeping cypress just in frame, and Hannibal watched as, true to his earlier word, Will’s dogs came to join him at his side. It was if they could smell the ineffable coming on. He reached out to one beast and it sniffed his fingers distractedly, perhaps smelling his master on him, and nudged its long snout up into his palm as it waited for the next blinding strike, the next roll of thunder.

And the storm was, indeed, impressive.

He ducks his head in the door of _Tabacchi Dorato_ , moving down the set of stairs into the sub-basement structure. He clocks Nicolo’s lined, frowning face behind the bar, filling orders as a few noticeable regulars chat and drink around the candle-lit tavern amongst noisy crowds of new faces that Hannibal must weave between, the rain-damp bodies tightly packed.

Zanetta is brushing fingers through her long hair at their usual table, her head pointed opposite to his approach, and Paolo’s face at once lights up as he sees Hannibal there.

“Friend,” the man shouts, and Zanetta turns with a smile. “I thought your presence may never grace this fine establishment again, and we would be forced to sup with the Lent-anticipators and their short-lived, drunken revelries.”

Hannibal pulls out a rickety wooden chair, joining them with a smirk. “My. You thought wrongly, Paolo.”

Zanetta reaches out to take Hannibal’s hand and returns the gesture graciously, bringing her skin to his lips and kissing her knuckles fondly. “ _Ciao, bella_.”

“Hanni,” she greets with a laugh lacing her tone. “Paolo tells me you live in the proverbial house upon the hill, now.”

“He does not exaggerate,” Hannibal quips back, “as he is so often wont to do.”

Paolo snickers along with them. “Yes, pile on poor Paolo. Not even one minute has passed and you are both once again ganged up against my throat,” he flourishes dramatically. “Do be gentle. Hanni, do not draw your knife just yet.”

Hannibal’s smirk deepens. “You know I could draw my blade, friend. But never against you.”

Paolo smiles and passes his own glass to Hannibal across the uneven surface of the wooden table. “Congratulations,” the man says, “officially. I will go retrieve from the disconsolate and overwhelmed Nicolo a flagon, and we shall celebrate.”

He gets up to move toward the bar, and Zanetta lays her chin in the heel of her hand, balancing her elbow against the table. She regards him dreamily, astutely, over the din.

“So, you are smitten, yes? I wouldn’t expect anything less could draw you from us,” she continues. “After de Reviello, I thought you would not jump so quickly back into the—danger of mediocrity.”

Hannibal sighs, swirling the deep red liquid that Paolo had passed him. Zanetta takes a sip of her own drink but does not remove her incisive eyes from his face.

“You are right, on the latter,” Hannibal agrees. “It was at first an allowance borne of necessity. We talked about that,” he tells her. “Then—I could tell, that place is special—He is special, Zanetta. I feel things there I never did at de Reviello’s. Even today—” Hannibal chuckles to himself, pausing to drink deeply, lost in the reverie with his eyes focused on the table as he lets all this out. “Today, with the storm, and the villa so high to the heavens it felt like God’s hand was there, just out of reach, casting bolts down across the cityscape.”

Zanetta lets out a soft breath at this description. He brings his eyes up to hers.

“I am inspired in a way that I thought was lost to me, forever.”

Her dark eyes shimmer in the guttering light of the candle flames. Then, in a warm rush of emotion, she reaches forward to grasp his hands in hers.

“I am so happy,” she tells him, squeezing. “So happy for you, Hanni.”

He squeezes back. “And, tell me—what of you and Paolo?”

A look of bemused irritation crosses Zanetta’s features, and she leans back in her seat, moving her hand from Hannibal’s to once more take up her wine. “Let us talk of other subjects—something not revolving around men,” she suggests lightly, drinking deeply from her cup. Hannibal raises his brow quizzically at this, and Zanetta laughs.

“I am only tired, of it—of hesitant happiness. You may understand me, Hanni. You understand Paolo, at least—that nature of his has not changed since the youth he shared with you.”

She regards him seriously over her glass. A truth sinks into Hannibal.

“He told you of me—of my time served, then.”

She nods solemnly.

“Then you know,” Hannibal says, interrupted for a millisecond by a bawdy man passing and rattling his chair back, “that what we had was much earlier—is very long altered, changed. Zanetta,” Hannibal stresses, leaning forward. “Paolo is my dearest friend, and through him, you have become one, too. He is—ecstatic,” he chooses carefully. “I have not seen him like this with someone before, not even I.”

This softens Zanetta’s features. She melts in a way but grips her glass ever the more intensely.

“He saved me, then,” Hannibal continues. “But it was not with him, nor because of him, that I was imprisoned. It was after our time—twenty years ago, now, it must have been. A very, very long time.”

“I know,” Zanetta intones smally. “I know this.”

“You have nothing to worry about,” he tells her, trying desperately to assuage her fears. “Be happy, _bella_ —please, trust in him. Have faith. He will not lead you astray.”

Zanetta smiles at this turn of phrase. “I think these quickly-sinning Catholics are rubbing off on you.”

Hannibal chuckles kindly. “Perhaps,” he admits, draining the remainder of his glass as Paolo returns with a flagon and another receptacle into which he can pour the wine. Hannibal smiles gently as his friend takes Zanetta’s hand in his own, pressing a lingering kiss to her smooth cheek.

“I was too long gone,” Paolo intones, looking from Zanetta to Hannibal. “Some kind of something has transpired in my absence.”

Hannibal reaches for the flagon, filling Paolo’s glass, refilling Zanetta’s—then refilling his own. “No,” he rebuts, sharing an overt look with Zanetta. “Nothing of that sort. We were bereft of you, friend, and found no solace until you returned to us, as the sun.”

“As the sun?” Paolo laughs. “Gods, Hanni. Do shut up.”

They all three laugh loud enough to match the revelry around them—perhaps even surpass it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quoted verse is from Milton’s sonnet ‘When I consider how my light is spent’, which is what I named the chapter after, also.


	6. San Miniato al Monte

Hannibal is outlining the slim tautness of Will’s finely wrought fingers but is finding it difficult to focus.

Lazzaro, standing in his corner of the chamber, has half his face covered in ash—from the top of his hairline to the bridge of his nose, a large swath of foreboding black. The whites of his eyes stand out starkly against it, the coldness of his gaze amplified. He is staring at Hannibal now like something ominous just emerged from the other side of a veil, from another world.

In the commotion of beginning his tenure at Villa della Osso Bianche, and sinking into Will’s visage, Hannibal had completely forgotten about the advent of Ash Wednesday. Even Zanetta’s and Paolo’s jibes about the overindulging crowds in _Tabacchi Dorato_ the night previous had not truly sunk in. But today is in fact the first day of Lent, and Lazzaro has decided to forgo the typical ashen cross on his forehead, and instead dip his head entire into the bowl of ash.

Hannibal would find humor in this if it were not so disconcerting, or distracting. The sight of it, coupled with a hangover, makes him feel thin-blooded and unwell. He thinks he may have to cut back his evenings out in order to comply with the morning-starting schedule Will so desires him to adhere to.

He does his best over the next hour and a half to lay in the lines of the underdrawing, pointedly ignoring Lazzaro’s appearance and trying not to let himself be distracted for the reasons it appears as such. Despite his best efforts, he starts feeling seriously ill around the time the muzzy sun has risen high in the sky, and Ottavia’s firm knock on the door signals the arrival of lunch, and a break.

She is dressed today in a thick vermillion linen shift and a smart pair of heeled leather boots. Hannibal greets her with a bow, but notices when he deposits his charcoal onto the tall table behind him that his hands are shaking, a slight tremor running through them.

His gaze immediately goes to Will, who, sitting there in his sheets, has the slightest quizzical tilt to his brow. Hannibal wonders if his skin is tinged green in the presence of his Signore and Ottavia, and how apparent it is that he feels ailed in this way.

Then the scent of the usually wonderful arrangement of Ottavia’s dishes reaches Hannibal’s nose. He feels his stomach flip at this, and he raises the back of his hand over his upper lip as he tries to get ahold of himself. It is to no avail, and he finds himself forced to quietly excuse himself from the room.

The white hallway brings a certain coolness against his sweat-sheened face as he quickly makes his way into his own chambers. He stoops, digging behind his mattress for the hidden bone handle of his knife, finding it and bringing the flat metal blade against his feverish forehead. Its icy touch is soothing, and he drops heavily to the surface of his bed as he keeps the blade pressed there, resting his elbows against his knees and trying to breathe past the clammy nausea running in waves over him.

Eventually his trembling stops enough for him to bring the blade from his face, setting eyes upon the inscription there as he holds it out in front of him. _Nec spe, nec metv_ , it reads in primitive scratching. Without hope, without fear. He recalls the man who gave it to him that harsh grey winter so long ago, recalls his words on Platonic idealism and nominalism. Recalls the quiet dignity in his steps toward the gibbet, the small smile sent Hannibal’s way as the rope was wrapped around the man’s neck.

There is a knock on his door, and he quickly affixes the blade inside his doublet. Tommaso enters with a glass in her hands, which she holds out for him to take. It is water—no doubt collected from the copious rains of the day prior.

“Ottavia has sent me,” she says. “She thought you may be in need of this.”

Hannibal takes the glass. “Thank you, child,” he says, downing the cool liquid in its entirety. He notices the ashen cross on the girl’s forehead, just under her blonde fringe of curls, and extends his voice to ask, “Tommaso, why does Lazzaro look that way, today? Why not just the cross as you and Signore Graham have?”

Her usually wide eyes flit away in nervousness. “It is because his—group, I think.”

“His group?”

“ _Si, Signore_ ,” Tommaso responds. She moves uneasily closer, back into his room, not wishing to have to project her voice. Her tone lowers as she approaches. “I do not know much about them, except for what the Signore has told me. They all do things like this from time to time, and do this today—with their faces.”

“It is of a religious significance, then?”

Tommaso nods.

“Do you know what they call themselves?”

“ _Gli Scudi_ ,” Tommaso whispers. “The Shields.”

He can see the girl is frightened, and so does not press any further. He thanks her again for the water, and she bows before leaving.

Passing a hand over the brocade of his doublet, Hannibal feels the knife within—feels resolve settle over him at its comforting presence.

He stands and begins his return to Will’s chamber.

…

The next day, waking early after a full night of sleep, Hannibal once again tucks his knife underneath his doublet before padding his way along the marble floor to Will’s bedroom. Lazzaro opens the doors for him, regarding him mildly, face now free of ash. Scraping past him, Hannibal moves to the tall table and places his palette, finer-tipped brushes, and some jars of pigments against its surface. The easel has not been moved, and as he turns to greet Will with a bow, he finds the younger man absent upon his sheets.

Hannibal flashes his eyes to Lazzaro’s, concern knitting his brows.

“He’s fine,” Lazzaro intones prophetically, with a cruel humor lacing the words, “you’re only premature.” He keeps the chamber’s doors open as he regards Hannibal from a distance. “So eager to start, are you?”

Hannibal sets his jaw, giving a coolly measured gaze to the manservant. Though he is shorter and less broad of chest than Hannibal himself, he still has a certain dark magnetism and enduring presence as he stands his post.

“Yes, Signore,” Hannibal answers politely, removed. “Unsurprisingly, I am eager to fulfill my contractual obligation. The one that, as you’re well aware, stipulates I will be in this exact spot—every day, if Signore Graham desires, day after day—for seven weeks more.”

A scowl turns Lazzaro’s mouth down at the sides, but he says nothing further. Then, taking the jar of linseed oil into his hand, Hannibal begins mixing pigments, making sure that from his peripherals the combative, older man can always be seen.

With the charcoal outline completed yesterday in its various broad strokes, Hannibal now moves to ready the _verdaccio_. It takes many moments to make a full sampling of the ten lightening values of monochrome, arching across his wooden palette from black to greys to white, in addition to a greenish umber hue specifically for the undertone of Will’s pale flesh. This is something he had established over the years, taught first to him by van Honthorst as the technique of dead layering, which leaves the underpainting haunting and skeletal. Hannibal has since swapped out the yellow ochre for the greenish umber, preferring instead the sickish tinge for its ability to bring forth the moonlight-bright against subjects’ faces later on in the process. He believes it makes a better contrast, furthering the soft and stark push and pull of light and dark that renders a piece truly of the _tenebrosi_ discipline.

Without Will’s presence, Hannibal sets to darkening the shadows of the setting and background—those cast by the four poster’s curtains, from the fireplace. Even the lighter dogs he starts touching at with the _verdaccio_ , pert and behaved as they are in their master’s absence.

A fast shuffling reaches Hannibal’s ears as he fills in to the edges a single dog ear, and soon an out of breath Tommaso is lurching into the doorframe, her eyes wide and wild. They beseech Lazzaro of something too dreadful to her to bring into words, and Lazzaro at once steps forward at the drawn pain apparent on her face. She turns back the way she came and Lazzaro quickly follows after her, their hurried steps fading down the hall.

All at once Hannibal knows this is about Will. A few dogs were brought to attention at Tommaso’s presence as if they could sense this, their master needing help, and hop off the bed now, moving silently after the other two. Hannibal drops his brush and moves out of the chamber, following the dogs, catching sight of Tommaso and Lazzaro as they turn a corner down an unfamiliar hall. Despite his time in the villa, Hannibal has seen little of it outside Will’s chambers, his own room, and the scullery, too preoccupied with this project and his work, and knows not where this path leads.

Concern vaulting through him, he uses his long legs to maneuver between the beasts moving with him as fish in a stream, catching up easily to Tommaso and Lazzaro. They have already slipped within a pair of doors, inside a room which Hannibal can only see a sliver of from his position without. It is filled with bookshelves, small tables, large, tufted chairs, and natural light, facing as it is toward the north, but this does not hold Hannibal’s attention for long—for on the stone floor, on top of a thick carpet underfoot, lays Will.

The Signore is seizing violently, much more violently than the first time Hannibal saw him. His neck is taut and his veins are stark on the skin above his bedclothes and banyan collar, his jaw set hard enough to break the fine bones behind his features, and his limbs ferociously tremoring. As Lazzaro bends down to try to contain Will on his side, Tommaso looks on in abject anxiety with her hands balled helplessly into fists at her thighs. The dogs move into the room and sniff at Will, positioning themselves across him in places that Lazzaro cannot reach as he makes sure the Signore is breathing.

Pure worry on his face, Hannibal moves forward to join the scene, to offer his aid with what he can—But before he can enter, Lazzaro’s hard eyes are sharp on his, and the manservant is shouting at Tommaso to close the doors to the room. Tommaso is shocked into action by the anger lacing the tone, and she almost does not see Hannibal’s face as she hurries to carry out Lazzaro’s command. The doors are nearly shut when she raises her eyes to Hannibal’s, and something in her expression changes. “ _You care, too?_ ” it seems to say, with unadulterated surprise. And then her face, and the scene beyond it, is gone.

Hannibal stands outside the closed doors for a moment, waiting for them to reemerge, before realizing there is most likely another exit or entrance into the room. He pushes the lacquered wood doors open into the space, finding it eerily empty as his suspicion is confirmed. The afterthought of Tommaso’s anxiety hangs in the air like a thick smoke, and the lack of dogs, Lazzaro, and Will’s fiendish seizing gives Hannibal something akin to whiplash, confusing him into momentary nonmovement.

Instead, he looks around at this new space. It is a smallish room with a wide window, set in with some sill seating just outside the thick, yellow damask curtains. Hannibal passes by a modest table upon which a wax tablet is laying, and a bone and wood stylus. Will must have been giving Tommaso a lesson, Hannibal guesses, running his fingers over the sums across the tablet’s surface.

Moving to the shelves, Hannibal runs his eyes feverishly over a modest yet beautiful collection of works on philosophy, poetry, art, science, mathematics, medicine, and myth. He notes that there is a curious lack of Catholic texts, when his eyes light upon linen-wrapped parcels leaned against one another in the far corner of the room. Without needing to unwrap them, Hannibal recognizes them as unhung paintings.

In truth, Hannibal had not realized it until now—that the only painting he had seen so far in this art benefactor’s home was the one of Isaac staring down in eternal protestation. There were, of course, other fine things of beautiful craftsmanship spread all over the villa, but not paintings.

As he begins to move forward to uncover one, something stays his gait once more. Just there at his feet, where Will had been laying, the carpet is soiled with vomit. The presence of this sight raises a fine fear in Hannibal once again, and so he abandons his curiosity and moves swiftly back toward Will’s chamber doors.

When he arrives, Tommaso is standing without, her face still drawn and pale. As Hannibal approaches, he sees her mouth set strangely, almost apologetic, as more fear comes rushing into her eyes.

“What has happened? Is he alright?” Hannibal asks, stopping in front of her.

Tommaso can only shake her head. “I do not know, but—I’m sorry, Signore. Please do not go in to check. Lazzaro says he will kill you if you enter.”

Hannibal feels knocked back as if from a blow. The girl’s unadorned way of repeating these orders hangs heavy in the air between them, mixing with the tension of Will’s currently uncertain condition.

“Does he mean that quite literally?” Hannibal asks.

She can only nod. He hears Lazzaro’s urgent voice come forth from inside, but cannot make out the frenzy of muffled words.

“What does he do to him, to Signore Graham, when he is ill like this?”

“I don’t know what it’s called,” Tommaso murmurs, her lip shaking. “There is a kind of prayer, and purification herbs—”

“Something he has learned from _Gli Scudi_?”

“Maybe.” The child looks so frail here, and concerned, that Hannibal moves forward to bend on one knee in front of her, to take her hands in his own. For one moment she seems like perhaps she will move away, but instead grips to his fingers tightly as tears start to roll down her cheeks.

“Tommaso, does he hurt the Signore?”

“No—I don’t think—” She is shaking her head again, blinking rapidly as the tears keep coming despite her attempts to stifle them. The murmur from inside the doors grows louder, and Hannibal makes out a litany of words that are not in their countrymen’s tongue. A foreign and acrid smell reaches his nose, coming out into the hall from past the doors.

“I don’t know,” Tommaso finally sobs.

Hannibal can only hum comforting hushes, pressing gently the pads of his thumbs against Tommaso’s tear-stained cheeks to wipe them clean. He squeezes her hands again and is murmuring when she rushes suddenly forward into his arms. Without a second thought, he holds her and tries to provide the comfort she so needs in this moment. And Hannibal himself finds a small comfort in his commiseration with this child, over a person they so wish to help but do not know enough about, are not allowed to know enough about, in order to do so.

In this moment, Hannibal considers, briefly, risking entrance into the chamber—but if it came to a fight with Lazzaro’s rapier and his own blade, Hannibal does not know, is not certain, exactly who he would be trying to defend himself from, who he would be killing. Though he feels, instantly assured, that he would be killing someone doing Will harm, he thinks the odds are high it would instead be a trusted, irreplaceable doctor of the Signore’s. Hannibal simply does not know enough about Lazzaro, about his relationship with Will. And the possible risk to Will’s health is too great for him to consider doing this, simply to see with his own eyes what he already knows: That Will is gravely ill.

Hannibal makes sure that Tommaso feels comforted enough to regain her composure, before heading down the long hall to the front door of Villa della Osso Bianche, a task, half-formed in his mind, setting him into motion.

…

In the uncharacteristic brightness of the late winter day, Hannibal traipses his way up the hill to San Miniato al Monte. He picks his feet over the dozens of stone steps toward the partially white face of the basilica, sat on the hill as it is in the sunny midday, splayed out against the sky. Hannibal can do little except feel the intended design of being overwhelmed by the presence of God, close to the heavens and divinity. It is a welcome if abstract solace that inside he may find information, unable as he is to neither help Will nor fulfill his contractual obligations for at least the remainder of the day.

A heavy, pleasant incense meets his nose, and he breathes deeply after the exertion from bringing his body up the multitude of steps here at the top of the hill. The Tuscan greenery swaying gently in the distant hills moves like a calm sea, and deep in the valley the Arno makes through the city Hannibal can see, dotted here and there, small sailing ships and other merchant vessels.

Within the basilica, the high-reaching ceiling over the nave takes his breath away. This is not the first time he has set foot in the basilica, but the scope and breadth of it might as well erase all prior memories upon each individual encounter. His eyes light upon the illuminated mosaic of Christ between Mary and St. Miniato, in all its madder red, cream, and black hues, drawing the eye to the ceramic rafters and all their multitudes of pious complexions.

Under the guise of preparing research for a religious painting, Hannibal makes his way with one of the several tan clothed Olivetan monks ambling about into the library. It is in a sub-basement where the dank air proves to be somewhat clearer than in the sunken _Tabacchi Dorato_ , considering its residence upon a hill as opposed to in the damp sandbank of the Arno. Books here are chained to the weathered wooden shelves with long, rusting shackles, and are clearly both aged and well-used. The task he intends to carry out may be an enduring one, but Hannibal knows he has some time to search today, at least.

Using the light of a tallow candle, he makes his way through the shelves, pausing here and there to pull out heavy, dust-laden tomes. It is a long time before he finds anything relatively close to what he is looking for, and by then the tallow candle melted into a pool in the bottom of its brass holder. He pauses to get another one, replacing it before returning to his location in the stacks.

The book he pulls forth is titled _Partum Inquisitionis Romanae Sectae_ , chronicling Christian sects operating during the Roman Inquisition in the latter half of the previous century. Within, he finds mention of a long-established, halfway mystic group named _Gli Scudi_.

Hannibal does not cease reading, turning brittle page after page until late at night, far after the moon has fallen and the monks have begun ushering him with stern looks from the inner grounds of the basilica. Even after exiting the library and the high chamber of the reception of the building, Hannibal sits for quite some time in the _cimitero_ , watching distant flames spark into existence and fade out, legs collected under him in the chilled air as he thinks over what he has read.

Though Hannibal knows now that _Gli Scudi_ believe themselves to be a barrier against evil manifesting itself in the physical world, Hannibal knows not how nor why Lazzaro came to be or remains in the Signore’s employ. The way he handles Will in the throes of his illness suggests a medical knowledge, and his possession of a rapier and the way he holds himself perhaps a vestige of time spent in the military, or even in training for his believed-to-be holy service to the Christian world. _Gli Scudi_ disseminated soldiers throughout the Inquisition, and even though those battles are now a hundred years past, Hannibal has a feeling that they never stopped preparing their adherents for war: A war believed to be never-ending, an infinite holy decree.

In the silent night, Hannibal wonders how long Lazzaro has known Will, or _vice versa_. Wonders upon what, exactly, the crux of their relationship is established. To attend to Will’s medical needs, or something else entirely?

When he returns to Villa della Osso Bianche, the pale place is quiet as the tombs he just left. Only having partaken in the bread and weak wine offered to him by the monks during his studies, he moves down into the scullery for whatever may be left over from dinner. He shifts as silently as a shadow through the halls lined by the occasional guttering candle flame, ensconced high on the stone walls, using his fingertips to guide and steady his descent down the spiral steps into the hearth-filled room.

Hannibal is surprised to find Ottavia awake, sat at the rough wooden table. She is illuminated by a heavy candelabra and the hearth, glowing with embers almost extinguished. Hannibal is just inside the edge of the stairwell when she murmurs gently, “This will get your strength up. You must eat something, just a little, Will.”

Sitting with her is the Signore, in the flesh. Hannibal stays his feet just below the lintel of the passageway, shifting in the darkness to get a better angle. He sees that Will looks pale even in the warm orange glow of the candle flames and embers, and is moving very little, with a look of agony hung like a drapery across his beautiful face.

“I know, Ottavia. Bless you. Only it pains me to chew, this time.”

“Yes. Well, you’ve done well by getting yourself here,” she praises kindly. “How about some soup, then?” She is holding a spoon up to him, and it looks as though there is a bowl of thick, steaming puree and small plate of tender white meat laid out between them. She cups her palm under the offer of the spoon, and Will takes it from her with a weak and stilted movement, slipping it past his lips.

“I can mull some wine for your aches, if you’d like?”

Will shakes his head, grimacing, returning the spoon to the bowl of soup. His usually soft, dark voice is cracked, made rough by pain. “Perhaps some vinegar-honey, and—has Lazzaro found the squill root again?”

Hannibal continues to watch unseen for a moment, thoughts forming underneath his desire to observe, to figure out what has transpired as if it were a script he could lift from the Signore’s shadow dappled features. If only he could look long enough. But he knows that Will would not want to be seen by himself like this. And he does not want to take more from Will’s health with anything that would so rankle him, nor truly does he think his relief-weak, concern-laden heart could withstand the cold, proud gaze of those light eyes when Hannibal knows the younger man feels anything but pride.

So Hannibal leaves, and despite the tiredness held in the fine muscles behind his eye sockets from reading all day, he soon finds himself slipping past the doors of the Signore’s library. In the white moonlight he searches for anything he can find on Will’s condition, fingers running over medical tomes before he has a stack of five or six, among them works by Aretaeus, Fabricius, and Harvey. He collects them in his arms and makes his way back to his room, starting a fire in the small hearth, uncorking a half-finished flagon of wine, and settling into the wooden chair and table there in the corner.

He burns through two beeswax candles while reading, falling asleep where he is sat some time just before dawn.


	7. A tavola non s’invecchia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To market, to market. ♫

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: some period-appropriate underage drinking, and mentioned transphobic abuse.

Tommaso, sitting across from him, wears a faded brown leather jerkin and is even more unadorned than usual. Not even the mauve cap Hannibal has grown fond of sits atop of her head, her straw-gold curls.

She had come with a meal for him sometime after midday, waking him from where he still stretched over his table, underneath him the many books filled with Latin and old Greek missives, anatomical drawings of circulatory systems, trephined skulls, and bodies paralyzed in miasmic rapture. Despite these images (nothing he had not seen the live truth of, long ago, scrawled by his fists against the cobbles after many a bar fight), Hannibal feels purposeful, and better prepared than he had been the day prior.

He cannot say the same for Tommaso, however. The girl’s face has taken on a shadow, and Hannibal wonders if she had gotten any sleep at all. He eats now, and does not report to Will’s chambers as, according to Tommaso, the Signore is much too ill to sit for his portrait—and may be so the day after, and the next.

Hannibal takes a chunk of white bread between his fingers and tears it, slipping some past his lips and washing it down with wine. He poured Tommaso a glass, and she had taken a sip of the diluted, spiced stuff, but it sits mostly forgotten by her left hand as she stares at the wood grain of the small table, lost in reverie.

“Have you eaten today, child?”

Hannibal’s voice brings her forth, some light returning to her dulled eyes as she regards him. She nods, then picks up the wine and takes a bracing swallow.

“What is ailing you so?”

Hannibal was surprised when the girl decided to pull up a chair by his hearth instead of depart after handing him the midday meal upon a lacquered wood tray. He does not forget their moment of commiseration over Will, and wonders now what Tommaso thinks of him—is he still a specter of her father, or someone she is beginning to trust? Her body language suggests the former, but there is something in the midst of all her nervousness that gives Hannibal pause.

“I’m often afraid of losing Signore Graham.”

Hannibal regards her over the lip of his glass. “You’re quite close to him?”

“Yes.” Her voice is like leaves brushing against one another in a breeze. “He is more of a father to me than my own was. We were doing our daily lesson when he—” She bites her cheek and does not continue.

Hannibal sighs, a small sound of sympathy. “What would happen to you if the Signore…” He chooses his words delicately for Tommaso’s sake. “… Could no longer keep you in his house?”

Tommaso frowns. “I suppose I would—have to find employment elsewhere.”

“Not return to your familial home?” Hannibal brings a diminutive forkful of fowl into an olive tapenade spread, chews silently as Tommaso shifts in her seat.

“There is nothing for me, there.”

“No?”

It is the first time Tommaso brings her eyes to his. There is something arresting in the gaze, interesting, and so Hannibal lays down his fork almost as an afterthought. A mottled heat raises on her cheeks, stretching across the nose bridge into the undereye, right up to the blonde lashes around her dark brown eyes. It is as if the sincerity of her truth can be seen from the outside, bared by the thin flesh of her face.

“Do you know what it is like when the skin you’re wearing does not fit?” She is not seeking an answer; rage rising to the surface of her usually placid features. “When your father does everything he can to make sure—To make sure you know your place?” she bites.

Hannibal holds his breath watching her, watches the pain, yes, but also the capacity and fertility of the anger that razes her through. He does not blame her for seeing something of her father in him, wanting a stand-in to blame and make sense of her pain—the thing that fuels this rage now. Hannibal wants to stoke it, burn it off clean, leaving only the thing underneath: That he could be something like a _true_ father to her, satisfy this never-felt desire to nurture, to guide a life.

Hannibal pushes his food aside after a moment, leans forward, taking her hand once more in his.

“Tommaso, what if you simply—allowed this shell to leave?” he asks slowly, carefully.

Tommaso tilts her head quizzically, not yet shedding the uncharacteristic hardness in her eyes. The straight, high line of her nose is stark against the mid-afternoon sun starting to come in through his west-facing window, filtering through the orchard’s quickly foliating trees.

“Why not allow it to depart from you?” he clarifies. “I have let many things depart from me, many selves that no longer serve, over the years. It is how you make room for others more suited to take their place, to feel natural and at home in the world. To align your self-image with your outer actions.”

She considers this a long moment. “I do not think I know how to do that.”

“I think you do,” Hannibal responds. “You have already felt and known much in your life. You only require practice.”

The color is draining from her face, settling back into the veins and capillaries that rush blood through her, just underneath the surface. Hannibal watches her fall back into a stilted reverie, fall back into her thoughts.

“Allow yourself to become who you are,” he suggests, voice light but firm. “And that crying boy, abused by your father, will not cling to you anymore.”

This phrasing causes her to knit her brows, but she does not rise again into rage. Her breathing is even.

“Do you know what clings to you now? Who you are?”

Her eyes catch sunlight, reflect. “A girl.”

“Yes.” Hannibal squeezes her hand. “Yes, you are. So, revel in it.”

…

Tommaso leaves him a few hours from the early winter dusk, taking with her a head buzzing with new thoughts, and Hannibal once again pulls Will’s library’s tomes toward him across the table.

> _With white eyes and a terrible keening, the hand-of-sin erupts in stunted spasms, jerking the body of the afflicted until the nerves corrode from the unholy touch. White horns of pain sprout inside the skull of the damned, and can be seen possessing the limbs under moonlight…_

Hannibal reads on, some accounts far more mystic, some more clinical. However, the very real vision of Will against the carpet and stone has not quite left him alone, and he looks ardently at each illustration presented before him, each description of those who have suffered similarly to Will.

As he does this, the bulb buried in his chest begins to break apart and sprout.

He wants, sharply, to create this image of the Signore with his own two hands, laud it here in the physical, bring it from his mind and preserve it as if in amber with his charcoal and chalk.

Drawing forth his sketchbook from where he keeps it behind his bed, Hannibal flips past the many faces of _Tabacchi Dorato_ and sees the one of Will made for his friends. Tracing the lines briefly with the tip of his fingers, Hannibal gazes down at this vision from where he is crouched like an animal made half-mad by longing.

Standing quickly, he strides back to his table and pushes a space clear for the sketchbook. He lands on a clean page, runs his palm over its blank surface, turns the paper lengthwise, and sets to work.

The first day he met the Signore clouds the area just behind his eyes, guiding his hand and using his gaze as a conduit to bring forth this thing from where forgotten thoughts go. He does this as one in the textile trade turns sheep’s wool into thread, picking burrs and spinning infernally, shepherding the image through the maze of air across the veil, bending his spine over his labors.

All movements bring him closer to Will, to a Will locked in the hysteric possession of this thing that makes a mutinous home from the bones of his beautiful body.

…

Hannibal immediately starts sweating from the claustrophobic heat found in the scullery, bowing to Ottavia while she rushes from fire to fire. She only inclines her head in the slightest, unable to tarry long. Some unignorable, divine scent has brought him forth from his work—as well as the last flame of his candle guttering into acrid smoke, leaving him sightless in the black nothingness of his room.

“Would you like some assistance?”

Ottavia lets out a sharp laugh, throwing a smile over her shoulder.

“Ever the gentleman, Signore Lecter. How much do you know about olive oil roux?”

“Nothing at all, I’m afraid.”

“Then take a seat and relax. We’ll have the rabbit done shortly.”

Tommaso pops out from underneath a counter cabinet, brandishing a copper saucepan and lighting her eyes on Hannibal briefly, nodding, before moving around Ottavia as if locked in the steps of a maddeningly quick _furlana_. They twist and glance off one another as they set about their harried work, and Hannibal cannot help but be amazed at the skill and grace of each movement required of the two women to bring this meal together.

However, both Lazzaro and Will are absent, and Hannibal wonders if he is perhaps early. He wishes to ask the women if they have seen or heard anything about Will’s condition, but bites his tongue in the face of their work and sweat. Instead, he does what he is confident he can—bringing wine forth into three glasses and setting about readying the table.

His fingers still feel raw from rubbing chalk and charcoal as he moves to light a thread against the flames of one fire (while neither Ottavia nor Tommaso seem to be moving toward it), bringing carefully the tiny petal of flame to the candelabras further into the scullery. Some are standing near to, and some are sitting on top of the surface of the weatherworn wooden table, so he bends and stretches about his work, feeling the pleasant twinge of pain run through his back and shoulder from his earlier ministrations.

Hannibal is playing with a candle’s flame, recalling the sketch and distractedly sipping wine, when Ottavia and Tommaso propel armfuls of dishes to the surface of the table.

“Apologies about the delay,” Ottavia begins, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead as she and Tommaso take a seat before their plates and utensils.

“Not at all,” Hannibal demurs. “My mind was elsewhere.”

Ottavia sighs, bringing a dish with what Hannibal assumes is the roux closer to her plate, ladling some from it onto her portion of meat. “There’s been a problem with the furrier and butcher guilds lately. Some nonsense about late winter availability. Tell me who cannot find rabbits this time of year? It’s absurd.” She stabs at some meat and brings it to her mouth, and Hannibal cannot help a smile. “I’ll go and snare them myself and have the whole business done quicker than that useless lot.”

“Do you hunt, Signora?”

“Please, I think you can call me Ottavia by now,” the woman tells him. “But, yes, I do. Or, did. It is much harder in the city—the only game being rats and feral cats.”

Hannibal thinks briefly of Gio, and wishes he could collect the toothy feline’s scant weight onto his lap at this moment, run his hands over his mottled fur and be rewarded for the affection with a sharp bite.

“Well then, Ottavia, I could accompany you to the market on the morrow. See if we cannot talk some sense into these guildspersons.”

“One cannot talk sense into the senseless,” Ottavia laughs bitterly. Then her face is bright. “Though, yes, I would enjoy your company during the shopping. I can always use the extra arms.”

…

It has been many years since Hannibal stepped inside the bounds of _Mercato Vecchio_.

The Old Market is one that comes upon a wanderer abruptly. If not paying attention, one will be on a deathly quiet side street and quite suddenly in the middle of the teeming masses hounding after the best priced meat, dry goods, produce, and weapons, the market itself a maze of cobbled streets and buildings, easy to become lost within. Crunched quite obliquely between the towering _case-torri_ tenant houses, massive sprawls of covered, stinking meat markets, and the foreign, beautiful architecture of the Levantine synagogues on the edge of the Ghetto, it is quite simple to get turned around and never come out—for no merchant will tell where any entrance or exit is, and if one does not know their way around, the endless hounding calls from one seller after another can raise to a deafening, confusing cacophony. The only landmark one may chance upon is the Colonna della Dovizia, with its black sandstone bust straining upward toward the heavens on a thin monumental pole, centralized in a portion of the _piazzetta_.

The scents and colors are much more vibrant than Hannibal has remembered. He sticks close to Ottavia’s sure, practiced steps, taking it all in anew without losing sight of her strong, tall spine weaving among crowds of pickpockets, hawkers, drunks, and beggars.

“You do this every day?” Hannibal calls to Ottavia above the din, and she glances over her shoulder at his face before focusing back on creating a path in front of her.

“Nearly,” she calls back. “Believe it or not, I enjoy it.”

Hannibal can, for he sees little to dislike. The is the kind of venture that he spent some time in his youth on—the clashing push and pull of culture and sights wrapping him up in their endless curiosities and delights.

They find a quieter corner out of the busy procession near a preserve seller, and as Ottavia picks up each berry-colored jar to smell its contents despite an eyeful of evil emanating from the merchant, she turns to him and regards Hannibal critically.

“You’ve given Tommaso a headful of interesting ideas.”

“Oh?” Hannibal asks, immediately sure he is in trouble with the woman. “She spoke to you about that?”

“She did.” Ottavia piles up three dark purple, almost black, jars of sambuca and drops some coin into the merchant’s proffered palm. She tucks them into a sack with handles she had brought with her, clasping it between a fist. “You know she has only just turned thirteen?”

“Yes,” Hannibal answers plainly. “It is never too early to know yourself.”

“That’s what you call knowing yourself?” Ottavia asks with a jibing grin. “One minute she’s in tears over the Signore, and the next she’s telling me which dresses she’ll be wearing into the city during the Easter celebrations.”

Hannibal furrows his brow, and they move on to the next street, which is quieter still.

“You find issue with her wearing dresses?”

Ottavia is waving her slim hand. “Of course not. No, that is not the issue I take with your conversation.”

“It was not my intention to be inapt, Ottavia. If I have misstepped—”

Ottavia’s feline eyes remind him of a mother cat, and Hannibal realizes what has happened. He has put an impetuous in Tommaso to affirm her life—only Tommaso interprets this to be through a life _style_ , as children often do.

“Think on the Easter crowds, Hannibal. I saw how you behaved the morning of Lent, so you are aware. She was not talking of going in the daytime.” Ottavia’s voice is deep and deadly serious. “What do you think they will do to Tommaso, in a dress?”

Hannibal brings a breath deep into his chest, brushing past a group watching a quartet of musicians with Ottavia’s eyes still burning against his cheek. He has not seen the jubilant woman like this before, and can see with cutting clarity how she is able to navigate the degeneracy of this market day in and day out.

“She is too concerned with _boys_ ,” Ottavia sighs, exasperated, bringing them to a fowl vendor on the outskirts of the butcher building. “Too interested in stories of Venetian balls, and too set on thinking that to be a woman means to be defined by a man, despite my best attempts at telling her resolutely otherwise.”

“You are worried for her.”

“Of course I’m worried for her,” Ottavia responds. “She is a ward of Signore Graham, and therefore my responsibility when he is unable to—”

Even though he was able to resist the night previous at dinner, waiting even past it, hoping to see Will by stalling while washing dishes, Hannibal now finds the question rise unbidden past his lips.

“Unable to—?”

Ottavia hesitates with the legs of a half-plucked mute swan, gripping her brown fingers firmly around its black, webbed feet.

“Tommaso tells me also that you care for the Signore. That you wished to see to him despite Lazzaro’s usual threats,” Ottavia says lowly. “Is this true?”

“Yes.” The word comes from him, immediate—he does not even stop to consider answering otherwise.

They sidle out of the way of other buyers at the fowl booth, pushed into a corner of the market where the dramatic angle of the high walls cast long shadows over their faces, completely obscuring the bright sun. Ottavia regards him, close, her eyes softening to an expression that Hannibal is familiar with on her rich, angular features—Something dark, deep, and kind.

“Ask me what you’ve wanted to since yesterday, then.”

“Is he alright?” Hannibal begins. “I—cannot stop thinking about his seizure.”

“It was a terrible bout,” Ottavia nods. “Do not worry long. He has strength, yet.”

“Despite Lazzaro’s… usual threats?”

Ottavia laughs humorlessly, flashing her white teeth. “Yes. Despite them.”

Hannibal looks from one eye to the other, measuring. Ottavia is expecting this, his next question. “Have you ever feared for the Signore’s life for a reason other than his illness?”

Still, trouble rises to the surface of her expression. “That is a question with an answer that stretches back twenty years, to when Lazzaro first met Will.”

She grips the bag with its preserves closer to her, shifting uneasily on her feet. Hannibal watches the crowds around them, to the occasional passing glance at their position in the darkness of the _piazzetta_. The feeling of being watched is not far from the back of his mind, as if the correctly timed whip of his head could catch an observing offender in the act. Like a prey animal he is aware of this, and knows that Ottavia feels similarly just bringing the name ‘Lazzaro’ to her lips.

That is why her next words are hushed. “If you stay in our household, Hannibal, I think there will be a reckoning between you and Lazzaro.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It is not my place to explain. I only wish to forewarn you in the only way I can.” Ottavia’s brow holds some pain in it as she adds, “I have known the Signore a long time, and if you truly care for him, give him this gift: accept that his life, his secrets are his own to tell.”

Without a word more she slips back into the steady stream of people in the crosspaths of the market, continuing her shopping for the day’s meals.


	8. Cochineal Red

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Descriptions of tamer medical stuff this chapter.

Despite Ottavia’s advice from earlier that morning, Hannibal cannot resist drawing out of hiding his sketchbook, his sketch-Will, and continuing work on it as a fine storm brews over the rolling hills just outside the city.

It approaches from the west, full of menace and fury in its sights and sounds. The rumbling seems to make the silent moments between all the more still, and Hannibal bends to stoke the fire going beneath the mantel before he opens his single, wide window to the elements.

It is the perfect weather for him to bring forth the specter haunting Will’s limbs, the candle’s flames near him racing around their points of origin, stretched long and thin as the wet wind whips into his austere room.

…

Five days pass before Hannibal lights eyes on the true Will again. No amount of wine shared with Zanetta and Paolo, nor mornings waking to pats from Gio’s sharp paw, nor time poured into the delicate details of his sketch-Will could slake the thirst he feels slaked simply beholding the Signore, now.

If possible, those cheeks are ever the more hollow above an even darker, starker jawline. His lips are pale and his eyes ringed, but none of this detracts from his ethereal gaze as Hannibal matches it, bows without breaking it. He stands there for a pregnant moment in the opening of the room, barely breathing, barely noticing Lazzaro’s impatient scowl. Just looking at Will sat in his bed amongst his hounds, glinting silver jewelry nestled in the halo of his curls, hanging against the jutted clavicles at his upper chest, and wrapped around the elegant slimness of his fingers.

“It is good to see you once again, Signore.”

Will blinks softly, the shadow of a wince deepening the corner of his mouth as he swallows. “Painter.” The usually hard, dark voice has gone lighter at the customary name Will uses—with a hint of familiarity, of fondness, Hannibal hears. Hopes he hears.

“Shall I begin right away?”

Will’s mouth is a relaxed line, his lips resting delicately against one another as he blinks, a slight tilt of his head confirming Hannibal’s question.

Hannibal moves once more to the easel in the center-back of the room, seeing that his supplies had been taken good care of in his absence. Setting about making the _verdaccio_ paints, he glances briefly at the spaces he had not managed to fill in on portrait-Will’s face and form five days prior.

After making bone ash for black, Hannibal moves on to the varied flesh tones required for Will’s pale skin. To these grey-creams and grey-tans he adds to the palette a slightly darker grey with an undercurrent of pale green. The younger man’s eyes have a gripping, haunting sunkeness to them—but Hannibal realizes he must be careful, here. Wishing to be accurate as possible, to capture their poignant beauty, but not bring too much attention to the fact they are made so by the man’s illness.

He works diligently, faithfully, a deep peace settling into the center of him at being able to lift his eyes from the canvas to find Will sitting there across the chamber from him, time and time and time again.

Lunch comes but Will does not eat. Ottavia bows and offers a small smile to Hannibal, but does not linger for long, nor make the expression apparent, even when Lazzaro leaves with the dogs to take them outside. She simply trades hushed words with Will, eventually passing him a glass vial that he presses to his lips, and, tilting his head back, swallows the liquid contents of. She takes the empty container from him and pockets it just as Lazzaro returns, making a silent show of busying herself with bringing the food cart from the room.

Hannibal finishes the _verdaccio_ layer soon after lunch. Over it, he paints in broad strokes a coagulated rabbit skin gesso primer, locking in the work completed thus far. It truly does look of something out of myth—Orpheus seeing Hades, perhaps, in all its lack of color, in all its starkness of line.

“You mentioned pigments, Signore, from abroad. Have they arrived?”

“You’re ready for them?”

“Yes.”

Will stirs against his mattress, drawing himself toward the edge and gripping tightly to a pole of the four-poster for stability.

“Set the easel out of the way, then. Let it cure near the fire while we work.”

Hannibal hesitates for a moment. “Would you not like to see—?”

“No.”

Hannibal is not sure if the word comes out terse due to Will’s exhaustion, current exertions of climbing out of bed, or simply not wishing to see the canvas and his progress. Signore de Reviello was not one to hover, either, but he at least liked to see the painting after each step in the process, and from time to time during the topmost layers of color.

Instead of questioning Will, Hannibal brings the canvas across the few paces to the fireside, settling it into place facing the fire itself, managing to avoid smudging the wet surface. When he turns, Will has made the journey over to the window where a small wooden crate sits. His feet are again bare by the base of the crate except for his toe’s three thin rings.

“Take this to the table, will you.”

Hannibal strides over, scooping the crate easily into his arms and standing. He wishes to maintain this closeness to Will, but the man is already moving once more, his sage green bedclothes flowing liquidly around his sickly-thin body, coming to wait by the edge of the spindle-legged table and stool.

“Put it on the chair for now.”

Hannibal does as he is instructed, and Will reaches into the crate, bringing forth an assortment of jars, liquids, powders—even cheesecloth and a mortar and pestle. 

“Have you made pigment on laked alumina before?”

Hannibal regards Will’s profile, downturned as he moves the items about the surface of the table. He is only a pace away, less than an arm’s length.

“I have,” Hannibal responds, soft. Will brings his eyes up at the tone but does not tilt his head to meet Hannibal’s gaze, focusing once more on the items in front of him.

“We’ll work on a _smalti_ , then.”

Unlike the dye lake, Hannibal has never heard of this technique. Will’s fingers find a jar and pull from it fine, clear crystals that almost resemble glass, with some containing milky phantoms and small, sharp points. These he puts into the bowl of the mortar, passing Hannibal the pestle.

“You’ll have to crush them.”

Hannibal reaches to take the tool, the pads of his fingers lingering on Will’s own fingertips. The younger man pulls away but not quickly—almost as if he had not felt the apparent touch.

“To what end?”

Will moves a half step to this right, increasing the distance between them by that much. This facilitates his ability to reach another jar, one whose contents make an audible, dry susurrus as he shifts it into the air.

“To add to a pigment,” Will explains. “Like a laked dye it affords the color something like translucence, but the powder must be very fine for the texture to seem correct next to other paints.”

“You’ve hired me not for skill, but for brute strength,” Hannibal jokes, aware that crushing these crystals into a dust is not something Will would be able to manage in his state. Hannibal is surprised the man is choosing to stand, but for pride, that fire behind his chimeral eyes, unfaltering.

A shadow of a smile crosses Will’s features, and Hannibal’s heart spins in his chest. “Perhaps.”

Will pours from the jar some weightless, miniscule, white husks and collects them in his palm. Hannibal cannot make out what they are and Will notices this, stepping once again closer and proffering his upturned hand.

“Go ahead,” Will states. Hannibal flicks his gaze to the younger man’s hesitantly, unsure. But the desire to touch him supersedes his ability to hold back from doing so, and he circles one hand gently around Will’s slim wrist to keep his arm steady, taking the thumb of his other hand to push lightly into the fleshier skin as the heel of Will’s hand. He presses, smearing the white stuff and is surprised to find that it leaves a trail of deep, rich red.

“Cochineal red,” Hannibal says. “I had no idea this is what they looked like, before.”

Will’s smile has deepened when Hannibal brings his eyes up from the color. He has not let go of Will, and the shared touch begins to burn and warm like a fire, sparking bright.

At his post in the corner of the room, Lazzaro clears his throat loudly. Will withdraws silently at the sound, brushing the remaining insects from his skin and onto a small metal plate.

“I’ll begin on the lake if you’d like,” Will says, “while you’re making the quartz powder.”

Hannibal agrees, and sets to grinding the pestle against the basin of the mortar while Will sets up the aqueous alumina concoction. Above the scents of the materials, Hannibal is able to find once more the sultry sweet mixture of Will’s hair oil, closing his eyes briefly against the sensation of inhaling the wonderful smell.

“I’ve often thought on how to create the color of your eyes,” Hannibal admits, after a prolonged period of silence. He makes his voice low, hopefully no louder than the crackling of the fire. “Bismuth, from beyond the Alps? Layered copper and azurite, laked?” Hannibal sees Will shift, leaning imperceptibly closer at these questions floating in the open air. “It will be the triumph of my career to capture their exact shade.”

Hannibal watches as a slow heat spreads across Will’s neck, just below where the collar of his night shirt allows the eye to reach. Hannibal lets his eye trail down the front of Will’s garment to the silver rope chain suspending the _mano figa_ , studies its bleached bone carving and notices a small, flat bead between the bale and charm. It is knotted off, separated by a red thread, and Hannibal cannot for the life of him quiet the curiosity that fills him at this distinctive straying from the typical _mano figas_ he has seen before.

When he raises his gaze Will is regarding him, stopped quite completely in the middle of his ministrations. His full, pale lips part as if to say something, as if to ask a question of him, but then they close as Will swallows, brings his beautiful eyes away with a small shake of his head.

Dusk settles quickly on the room. It is once again time for a meal as they work into the evening—still not a morsel passing Will’s lips, save for another vial that Ottavia hands to him while Lazzaro is out of the room with the dogs once more. This time she wastes no time exchanging words with Will, and he swallows whatever liquid is in the vessel she passes to him. Then Ottavia is exiting the room with a slight nod, half welcoming and half warning, in Hannibal’s direction.

Will brings a glass forth across the cart, pouring wine. With it, he crosses the distance back to the table, back to Hannibal. He lifts his eyes to Hannibal’s as he hands him the glass, and Hannibal takes it with a small smile. Then, Will takes his previous spot around the table, close by, his face downturned to his work.

It is the first time they have been alone in a room, together.

Hannibal regards Will, drinking lightly, glancing from the man’s profile to the untouched food beyond.

“Do you have a problem with appetite?”

Will shrugs slightly, the movements weighted down. “My thoughts are not often… appetizing. The illness makes it so.”

Hannibal remains quiet, watching, listening to the sound of Will’s soft breath so close to him.

“Nightmares,” the younger man supplies distantly, distractedly. For one moment he sits in a pool of his own thoughts, observing the cochineal alumina lake swirl, conjoining and separating. Then a fine awareness crosses his features, and he seems reticent that he has revealed so much.

“What of your appetite?” he asks, perhaps to cover the nervousness causing his eyes to flick over Hannibal’s features. Hannibal cannot help widening his smile at the younger man.

“Fine,” he replies. “It was not always so, but lately it has never long wavered nor felt lack of something it desired.” Hannibal moves to place the glass against a small clear area of the table, pushing a sleeve up to his elbow. “I eat well.”

Will tilts his head at his voice’s timbre, possibly able to hear the ardor leaking into his words. Their eyes lock, their profiles closer now than they’ve ever been at this one move, a mere breath away. Hannibal feels an unexpected, sweet ache of desire settle deeply into his groin, parting his lips ever so slightly as Will’s eyes glance from his mouth to his pupils.

Will’s own pupils are blown wide, bone black swallowing the color, taking his image in. Scarce a breath passes in through his nose, and Hannibal reaches serenely to cup the side of Will’s face.

As he does this Will’s knees give, and the Signore starts a crashing decent toward the stone floor that his bones would make purchase with, if not for Hannibal’s quick movements arresting his fall. He grips Will’s forearm arm carefully, his other arm shooting out to wrap around Will’s lower back to support the man’s body entire. Will staggers against him from weakness, though still conscious, and Hannibal brings him flush to his chest. Those brown curls brush the side of his neck as Will’s forehead lulls forward against his shoulder.

Despite his feebleness, Will is softly hissing in pain and attempting to withdraw his arm, and Hannibal thinks for a moment that he has stained the Signore’s clothing with his paint-covered palm. But when he removes his hand, he sees Will’s silk sleeve sprouting a well of dark, cochineal red blood.

“Signore—” he exclaims softly as he realizes Will’s grasp to him, despite the pain, tightens impossibly. “You are bleeding—”

Hannibal bends his knees to gain purchase with his arm behind Will’s legs, scooping him up easily, carrying him. Will’s thin heartbeat is jumping in a vein of his pale, sweating neck and his eyes are lidded heavily, looking into Hannibal’s as if to say something Hannibal cannot make out, except that the gaze is strangely peaceful.

Truly concerned now, he returns Will quickly, gently to the surface of his sheets, feeling the younger man’s thin arms slip from him—but not completely—as he sits near and smooths the curls back from his forehead.

Hannibal brings his fingertips to the end of Will’s soiled sleeve, ripping the seam with practiced, careful movements to reveal the wound underneath. Beneath the slick red blood, the fresh knife cut wound, there are numerous other ghostly scars littering the landscape of the man’s upper inner arm—some new, some ancient. Hannibal realizes from his medical readings that Lazzaro has been treating Will by bleeding him.

He brings his hand to Will’s cheek, quite pale and sweating copiously, now. His thumb’s movement over the skin leaves a streak of blood, and the younger man is shaking, jumping at the touch, lashes fluttering. Will’s eyes are closed, and he does not open them.

It is then that the hound’s clicking nails sound on the marble just outside the door, and Lazzaro returns.

“Why was this not sewn?” Hannibal asks immediately, whipping his head around to regard the older man as the dogs move to pile themselves around him, around Will, sniffing and whining lowly.

“What do you know of it, Painter?”

“Do not question me for lack of bringing forth some thread, _fameglio_ ,” Hannibal fires back, matching the glowering menace present in Lazzaro’s own voice. Lazzaro scowls in offense at the word, and it is then Hannibal knows for certain he is not just Signore Graham’s manservant-doctor. Based on the level of disgust at being associated with such a word, Hannibal gets the strong sense Lazzaro is not even in Signore Graham’s employ, and is deeply insulted that Hannibal assumes, has been assuming, this.

But there is no time to tarry with these thoughts. Seeing that Lazzaro will not get him what he requires, Hannibal takes a quick look at Will then moves swiftly from the room with Lazzaro on his heels, enraged at the accusation. He counters hotly with his own accusation, not allowing Hannibal escape from this seething fury that has clearly been a long time broiling in his gut.

“Your cogs are turning, Painter—I can hear them clicking. I don’t know what you’re planning, but you’re planning something.”

“Are you truly suggesting I don’t have the Signore’s best interest in mind?”

Hannibal opens a pantry door just outside Will’s room, digging, searching for some silk thread and a needle like he had gotten used to using after some messier fights in his youth, healthily supplied by Paolo’s textile merchant connections.

“Why would you? You have already cracked open the skin. You can’t resist drinking what’s inside.”

Hannibal scoffs venomously, digs deeper in the dry closet, pushing past linens and other sundries until he feels a sharp point pressing against his spine.

“Stop at once, if you enjoy your innards where they currently lay.”

Hannibal brings his hands up and away, turning to face Lazzaro slowly, keeping himself low and ready.

“You’ve certainly clothed yourself in moral dignity, haven’t you?”

Lazzaro seems stopped by this observation, and that is when Hannibal sidesteps the thin blade meant for thrusting, springing forward and joining his fist to the side of Lazzaro’s face. It is not the most honorable move, but—neither is pulling a rapier on one’s turned back.

Lazzaro reels backward with the force of the surprise strike, a bitter acid in his gaze as he sees Hannibal’s high arms with their elbows cocked at a strong angle, the dagger taken from his doublet and gripped in one hand—sees the way he has brought his shoulder blades back and squared his body, kept close enough to strike and render the rapier nearly useless.

“Oh, Painter, I am not merely clothed in moral dignity—I am moral dignity.”

Despite the threatening figure Hannibal cuts, Lazzaro is smiling a slippery smile.

“I must be, because Signore Graham is the opposite.”

Lazzaro rounds him with careful, small steps and Hannibal stays trained on the man, watching for an indication, an angle of attack, when Lazzaro reaches the pantry and moves his hand into the dimness inside. He pulls forth a small cloth bag and tosses it to Hannibal, who catches it with his non-knife hand.

“Go. Do this, but behave yourself,” Lazzaro warns. “Or it will no longer only be about you, but about him, too.”

They inch away from one another, steadily lowering their weapons. Hannibal moves swiftly back to Will’s side after a final glance at Lazzaro, climbing on the mattress as the older man settles back into his corner post. Inside the pouch is thread and needles, and Hannibal sets about holding a metal point into a candle flame before threading the eye with the strong silk line.

“I am sorry, Signore, but this will hurt. Stay with me.”

Will stirs, eyes fluttering open. It takes them a moment to recognize Hannibal sitting there, and his hand slides, unseen, across the sheets to graze his thigh.

“Where else would I go?”

Hannibal looks from the gesture to Will’s gaze, who grants permission with a weak nod.

Hannibal keeps his sutures tight and even across the wound, allowing the Signore to dig his fingers into his thigh as needed to suppress the pain of his ministrations. Will’s sweat dampens his curls into a dark, almost black, brown, tendrils flattening and clinging to the magnificent structure of his features. Even as he works, Hannibal cannot help the feeling swelling inside his chest, filling him entire. His throat is tight as if he is so full that he is choking on it, the heat of it pushing and pulling against the cage of his chest.

When he raises his eyes from time to time to regard the Signore’s expression, to see if he is alright, Will’s lidded eyes are trained on his own, gazing wearily but evenly. Something flickers underneath their ever-changing nature, almost a mirror to what Hannibal knows is growing within him, now.

Withdrawing gently from Will’s side, Hannibal moves to produce a clean linen cloth from the painting supplies, soaking it in wine from dinner and running it over the sutured skin, cleaning from it the partially dried blood.

“They may itch,” Hannibal tells Will, sidling close to his prone form against the surface of the deep red bed coverings. “But try not to touch it. Keep it clean. Let it heal.”

Will brings his fingertips to Hannibal’s wrist, above the hand that still grasps the wine-soaked rag.

“That’s enough for today, Painter,” comes a terse voice from the corner of the room. Hannibal does not turn at Lazzaro’s command, refusing to break the eye contact he holds with Will.

“Put the portrait back before you go,” Will murmurs after a moment, doing his best to project his voice that should be barely more than a breath. “I do not wish to see it before it is complete.”

Hannibal blinks, but nods in tender affirmation. “Of course.”

“Thank you,” Will replies, and squeezes his wrist as he says this. A bitter sorrow fills Hannibal’s mouth and he must resist raising a palm to the young man’s cheek to caress it, knowing Lazzaro watches, hawkish, their every visible move.

All he can do, removing himself from this beguiling man’s side, is repeat the refrain, “Of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Fameglio_ isn’t one you can plug into Google to understand (it translates literally to "family" but that is not its meaning, here), so—it was a term used to address servants during this time period, and, while not at all offensive to an actual servant, it would be offensive to someone who is not a servant.


	9. Appetite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Underage drinking. Unsafe situations. Mentions of homophobia and transphobia.

Hannibal wakes from a dream of silk thread sutures and a long, thin blade running him through.

He coughs upon opening his eyes, as if he had not been breathing—the spasm in his throat painful. He knocks back a leftover mouthful of wine from the night previous, sitting up from the table where he had fallen asleep over his sketch of the tremoring Will. His back is hot where the dream-blade had struck him, and it takes a long time to shake this feeling. He stands and his body brings it with him around the room, unbidden.

He uses his fingers to clear the lines he had smudged during slumber, defining them, before collecting himself by his ewer and wash basin. He pours some of the scented water and splashes his face, running a wet rag over his underarms and the crux of his legs. The coolness of the room and water wakes him, focuses him, bracing.

When he arrives to Will’s chambers, he sees the Signore already at work near the spindle-legged table, the canvas once more turned toward the strongly stoked fireplace. Hannibal bows in greeting, which Will returns in a polite half-measure—more than his usual nod. Then, Hannibal regards Lazzaro standing at his post with a violently easy acceptance of the hostility borne of the man’s presence, matching its subtlety measure for measure as he turns his back and pads silently to Will’s side.

“How do you do today, Signore?”

Will nods, lifting his eyes from the portion of powders he has laid out against the table’s lacquered surface.

“What do you think of this color?”

Hannibal smiles smally before bending closer. He pokes the tip of his index finger into it, bringing it against his thumb in a smear. He holds its lurid wine redness up to the rings on Will’s fingers.

“Perfect match,” he praises, referring to the rough-cut garnet gemstones there. “You’re much more hands-on than my late benefactor, Signore. Do you always take this much interest in the process?”

Will shrugs, adding linseed oil to his creation. “It is easier to work with you than most,” Will admits, but does not embellish upon this. Hannibal’s smile widens.

“Because I offer no friction to your suggestions,” he claims. “However, it is difficult to refute good taste.”

Will shoots him an impetuous, slight smile. It is little more than a spark in his eyes, a raise of his eyebrow, a deepening of the corner of his mouth.

“Thank you for indulging me, nevertheless.”

The warmth and weight of the words are not lost on Hannibal. He touches the corner of the cheesecloth, folding the length of it over itself several times, unsure if he should inquire after the Signore’s stitches. The delicate gratitude of Will’s words harkens back to the events of the past day, opening the door, almost allowing for such an overstep to occur.

“And you are—well?” His voice is low, and he leans close to Will as he reaches for the basin of the mortar, beginning to sift the fine quartz dust through the cheesecloth.

“Fine,” Will responds, but sidles around the table’s edge. When he does not stop at a step or two, continues pacing, moving himself further and further away, Hannibal’s heart sinks into his stomach.

“When you’re through mixing the _smalti_ , take it to Ottavia,” Will is saying, bringing himself to sit once more on his sheets. He greets the dogs gently, and the vacuum left in the absence of his presence effects Hannibal deeply.

“It must be cooked for a while, in the oven. She will know what to do with it.”

These innocuous phrases leave the younger man’s lips with ease, and Hannibal knows then that, for all intents and purposes, the painting process has returned once more to the distance-centered status quo.

…

Feeling restless, dissatisfied, and something like inconsolable despite his best efforts, Hannibal leaves the villa and seeks out his friends at _Tabacchi Dorato_ later that night.

It is a night that mirrors many others, and not that his friends do nothing to comfort him simply with their presence (for he keeps them purposefully in the dark about his heartache), but the anchor attached so firmly to Hannibal’s heart is a heavy weight to drag around with him from word to word, expression to expression. Though used to wearing such a mask, he is able to sit at the table with Paolo and Zanetta’s quick jests and lovely smiles—able to sing songs with them when they request, and participate in the unspoken challenge they have all taken up against one another to drink the next under the table.

Nicolo, the bar tend, sets his mouth in a line at their not-out-of-place antics and sets to smoking another pipe full of fragrant, golden tobacco during the downtime between their requests for the next flagon.

Like this, it is quite easy for Paolo to stick himself firmly in the storied mud of the past. There comes a point in the night where he does little else other than begin conversation with, “Remember when—” turning his lustrous gaze to Hannibal. Mostly the stories are of fights they had bested others in despite all odds, for, once upon a time, they had racked up quite a count of men who took it upon themselves to bother them during one public revelry or another.

Hannibal, considering the bleak possibilities of his future—no more lessons in new paint techniques from the Signore, and inching ever closer toward the end of his project—accepts Paolo’s nosedive into the past quite readily. It is only when he sees, past the veil the wine has pulled over his eyes, that Zanetta is growing quite tired of both of their words.

“Remember when you had to sell all your belongings, in order to pay a fee to the _Ducale_ for Hannibal’s morality crime?” she asks sharply at the end of one of their repeated anecdotes, her pale skin flushed, drinking with some irritation from her cup.

A silence falls over the table, precipitated by Paolo’s shock. He turns to Hannibal, unsure of what to say—knowing that this is something Hannibal has trouble bringing forth from the halls of the past.

“I know that it is known, friend,” Hannibal tells him easily. “It is alright.”

Still, the hand that Hannibal brings his cup to his mouth with shakes. He tries not to think of his first job in Venice, being a fledgling painter traveling from Utrecht—tries not to remember the young man of the house, his love nor his betrayal, as he casts a glance between the two of them regarding one another, now.

“Zanetta, what is this?” Paolo’s good-natured face is drawn. “I am sorry to have offended you to the point of this uncharacteristic outbreak, _cuore mio_.”

Zanetta’s expression relaxes slightly at this apology, brushing a hand through her hair as she tries to shake the wine-made emotion from her.

“You—neither of you—speak of it. Of your past, in any real, meaningful way. Just these needless fights.”

Paolo’s gaze flicks to Hannibal.

“ _Bella_ ,” Hannibal begins, reaching across the table. “They were not needless. They were, unfortunately, very necessary.”

“We were able to defend one another, this way,” Paolo continues above the din of the pub. As late as it is, Nicolo must stow away his pipe and return to the offensive over his growing body of patrons. “These men meant to harm us simply because we were openly—together.”

A delicate understanding graces Zanetta’s features. She is all at once bereft of her earlier scorn.

“I—do not know what to say. I’m sorry.”

“No need for that,” Hannibal says warmly, grasping his friend’s hand in his own. “We should have done better to account for your feelings. These stories exclude you, and for that I am the one who should be apologizing.”

Zanetta’s eyes are black and wine-softened. “I do not mind the stories, truly,” she says, turning her face from Hannibal’s to Paolo’s. Paolo grasps her hand and they share a meaningful look. “I just know next to nothing of your past tenderness toward one another. I would like to, if that is acceptable.”

In the growing noise of the pub, Hannibal finds his gaze, usually so focused, being drawn from his friends and to a faraway commotion. He is dimly aware of Paolo starting another, more nuanced retelling of some tale between them, but cannot focus for his growing concern at a ring of men surrounding quite a young girl.

“Excuse me—” Hannibal hears himself saying, raising from their usual table to stalk, a bit unsteadily, over to the scene. He pushes through the crowd, men on either side of him startling at his height and build as he moves closer to the center, to the girl.

That is when he is met with Tommaso’s dark, fearful gaze as she is pushed yet again by a dirty hand emerging from the teeming crowd.

It is absurd how quickly he is able to slip into the ring surrounding her, wrap her in the protective circle of one of his thick arms as he moves to bring them out of view. When, inevitably, one of the men takes issue with this, their plaything being ushered away, Hannibal pulls out his dagger from his doublet, slashes the hand that reaches so improperly for the lace of the girl’s dress.

Blood drips from his dagger’s blade into the loam of the pub floor. Hannibal brandishes his knife, daring, and does not back down until he is granted passage through the crowd.

Moving Tommaso along by her upper arm, Hannibal takes her back to his table, to his seat. She has no choice but to sit down, and though Hannibal can see immediately that she is drunk—drunker than he is, perhaps—she looks at him with a new kind of understanding. Not fearful, yet not heartening: her dark eyes occupying some liminal space between.

Nicolo is looking at him from across the bar, dark eyes sly and mouth set in a thin line as his sharp gaze trains upon Hannibal’s dagger. Hannibal nods once, and Nicolo nods in return—an agreement settling between them that nothing more would come to pass inside the establishment. They break this moment by turning back to their own tasks—Hannibal taking a rag from the table and wiping his blade clean before depositing it back into his doublet.

“Are you hurt?”

Tommaso crosses her arms over her chest, while both Paolo and Zanetta regard her with some amount of astonishment and curiosity.

“Do you know this kid?” Paolo asks, eyes moving from the crowd behind, the occasional grave and cheated glances sent their way, back to Hannibal.

“Clearly,” Zanetta responds for him. She reaches across the table to pull Tommaso’s half-sleeve back up over her shoulder, smooth the loose curl of her hair at her jaw. “What’s your name, _morosina_?”

Tommaso looks swiftly at Zanetta, the motion sending her swaying. Then she finally moves her eyes to Hannibal’s, who has taken to crouching, searching her bare arms over for bruises and other injuries.

“This is Tommaso,” Hannibal says softly. “Tommaso, these are my friends Zanetta and Paolo. Will you say hello?”

Tommaso greets them both timidly, bowing from where she sits.

“She works in Signore Graham’s house,” Hannibal explains. Then he bends closer. “What are you doing here? Did Ottavia not tell you how dangerous it is, being out here alone?”

Tommaso’s expression remains dogged, but she seems close to spilling tears.

“You told me, Signore Lector,” Tommaso finally says. “Told me to find out who I am.”

Hannibal closes his eyes, almost wincing at the words. He sways and then settles on a decision, lifting himself from the dank floor.

“I’m taking you home, Tommaso. Come.”

“No—you will tell the Signore.”

“I will,” Hannibal says. “But not before you and I speak. Agreed?”

Reluctantly, Tommaso nods. Hannibal turns to his friends, who are gazing with understanding at the situation before he says a word.

“Do you need help, Hanni?” Paolo is asking. “Shall we shepherd you part of the way in the case of more trouble?”

But Hannibal is shaking his head slightly. “Let them come,” he says, a cool fury burning in him. It opens his heart, his chest—spreads into his wine-clouded veins and makes them clear. In moments like this, Hannibal knows what he was molded for—whoever designed him, their execution coming to apparent fruition.

They walk in silence back to Villa della Osso Bianche. Except for Tommaso’ teeth chattering in the chill of the night air, no sound escapes her lips, and Hannibal is fine to let her remain so if she wishes, simply draping his doublet around her shoulders without asking. She clutches the fabric of it closer over her bare arms, near swallowed by its material.

Just outside the villa, surrounded by musky-sweet juniper bushes, Tommaso swings herself down to sit on one of the four Calacatta marble steps leading up to the final stretch of the property. Partially hidden as they are by the foliage, Hannibal stops with her and takes this moment to look up to the almost full moon hanging like a plate in the sky. It is close—so much closer than it was in the city, glittering, below.

“You’ve had a bit to drink,” Hannibal begins after a moment. Tommaso holds her head in her hands, seemingly trying to right her world. “Do you need water?”

She shakes her head in the negative, breathing in deeply through her nose. When she turns her face up to regard him, Hannibal sees tears running down her cheeks.

“Why must you tell the Signore?”

Hannibal sits with this for a moment. “You are his ward,” he responds. “So, I simply must. But believe me, I do not plan on leaving out my fault in the scheme of it all.”

Tommaso bites her cheek. “I—have never had someone speak to me like you spoke to me. The fault was not yours, Signore Lecter.”

“Please, child—Hannibal, if you’d like.”

“Hannibal,” she tries. Her dark eyes search the ground between her feet. “I wanted to become someone else so badly. Talking to you made me realize how long it has been, here, living inside me.”

“Why have you not brought it forth, before? You have been here with the Signore for three years, yes?”

Her eyes close and she lets a weary breath wrack her slight frame. “Lazzaro,” she states, a whisper—something simple when said, but weighted. Hannibal knows this, now, that when those who are part of Signore Graham’s household speak his name, they do it with a forced, a dark reverence.

“Signore Graham indulges me, I know this… but Lazzaro—punishes him, for it.”

Hannibal sets his jaw.

“And—Hannibal—I wonder if he is not right. Not about Signore Graham, but about me.”

Hannibal stoops to bring himself down to her side, listening. The light from the moon shines upon the bridge of her nose, her earnestness. Her despair.

“The way they treated me in that pub—I know what I look like, now. Not a man, yet no woman, either. I am a monster.”

In the dimness of the night, Hannibal’s heart breaks.

“Tommaso, you are a victim of willful misinterpretation. You are not a monster.”

He waits with her until her crying evens into soft breaths, before leading her to her bedroom down the steps to the empty scullery, and through. She hands him back his doublet, climbs into bed, and Hannibal ensures that the covers are secure around her frame, before standing to close the door gently behind him.

Hannibal wastes no time making his way to Will, with no regard for the late hour. He has never called upon the Signore past dinner, and so an anxiety, a need, moves his feet swiftly through the halls.

The long stretch leading to Will’s chamber doors is lit by a few candles set high on the walls, and as he approaches Hannibal realizes one half of the ornate opening is ajar. Light from the fireplace inside spills out in a single beam into the darker hall, and Hannibal catches the sounds of a conversation just within.

“Why are you so concerned at his absence?”

It is Lazzaro’s voice, middling and leather-tough with something slippery beneath the surface.

“Have you forgotten what sin follows and corrupts him? For what he was once imprisoned?”

Instead of making his presence known, Hannibal sidles into the shadows of the corner, by the edge of one door.

“How could I?” Will’s voice hisses in response. The coldness in his tone is very different than the coldness he uses to address Hannibal. “You remind me constantly.”

Hannibal knows at once he is the topic of conversation, and his anger flares dangerously at this discovery: that Lazzaro has known of him, seen him, truly, against his will, and has been regularly slithering tales about him into Signore Graham’s ears.

“Then why risk your meager freedom with his employment?” Lazzaro fires back, tone revealing a similar level of violence to Will’s.

“You say that as though—” Will bites his sentence off tersely. “Lazzaro, cease this at once. You are out of bounds in my home. Remind yourself that I am not afraid of you, nor your— _amici_.”

“Oh,” Lazzaro intones, voice gone threatening, oily. “That is where I do know. You are afraid, Signore Graham. As you should be.”

Above the cutting, white noise in his head, Hannibal hears the shuffle of feet moving, of clicking dog nails.

“You would not allow me here, otherwise—Would quicker sink into wickedness instead of purify yourself under the eyes of God and atone.”

There is nothing for a long moment, then Lazzaro’s voice is casting itself out once more.

“You truly do not care if you die of your sin, do you?”

The words hang, odious. Hannibal watches as Lazzaro exits the chamber, back turned to where he stands, bringing the dogs out to the yard as Hannibal extracts himself from the shadows. He thinks for one long moment, stretching out into an indefinable distance, about allowing the blade of his dagger to taste blood one more time that night. But he waits, watching Lazzaro turn the corner, then enters Will’s room.

Will, sitting in bed, stares at him—he is panting, bereft of his dogs, his hands shaking. His chimeral eyes are wide, and Hannibal catches the possibility that the Signore may wish to weep. From frustration or fear, Hannibal is not sure, cannot see, before it is too late.

“Painter,” Will starts. “Now is not—”

“Are you not concerned fully with the wards in your charge?” Hannibal asks harshly, talking over the Signore.

Will is shocked into silence. Hannibal has never spoken to him this way, with this sharp-edged voice. Because tonight, the title of Painter from Will’s mouth only serves to rankle Hannibal. Whereas he was able to restrain himself at the hint of disregard in the title falling from Will’s lips, now Hannibal has trouble not letting his ire show, the wine and anger at having been being laid so bare this whole time moving his hand further in the matter.

“I’ve just found Tommaso alone in sesto Oltrarno, quite near to something going terribly wrong had I not already been out and seen her. She was in a circle of men who would sooner tear her dress from her than help her on her way.”

Will’s brow knits plaintively, and he does his best to keep himself within bounds at this news. For Will, Hannibal realizes, this means ensuring that he is in control of all his faculties—keeping his reason, and his pride within an iron grip. This stands in opposition to Hannibal’s allowance of his emotions to freely roil under the veneer of his stoic expression.

This, Hannibal sees: that Will is, and perhaps always has been, afraid of himself.

“I—try my best to keep a watchful eye on her,” Will replies, his voice tight, strained. “I thought getting her the dresses would make her… Would be enough. But she is young. She wants to experience life, despite that I give her what little she asks from me.”

Will runs a shaking hand over his face, adorned as it is with silver, glinting and picking up the light from the high flames in the fireplace.

“I know I cannot provide the thrill she seeks. That onus is on me. And perhaps that is the curse of a parent figure—to not be able to make our children’s mistakes for them, and save them the pain.”

Will has never spoken like this before, confided so much with his carefully chosen words.

“She must make her own mistakes. That is an experience we all must go through, burdened as we are to reach a moderately advanced age.”

A long moment passes in which Will is lost in his thoughts, and Hannibal feels the tension in his body, in his held muscles, slowly pool out of him.

“What should I do?”

The question is barely more than a breath. The humanity in it stuns Hannibal, draining him of any misguided anger he had been directing at Will. He softens, his shoulders sagging imperceptibly.

“I had a hand in this, too. The onus is as much on me.”

Hannibal stalks closer to the base of Will’s bed, looking up at him.

“Allow me to accompany her,” he suggests, his hands behind his back. He meets Will’s gaze, holds it calmly. Studies the blue, green, grey shifts that those eyes undergo, waiting for his next words.

“You do not know my neighborhood, Signore, and at night—at night, it is no place for anyone, really, but much less Tommaso, alone. However my friends and I, we lead a lifestyle she would enjoy. I could offer her the safety she needs.”

Will regards him with that depthless gaze. “What safety is this?”

Hannibal pulls his dagger from his doublet, and Will’s eyes narrow, flashing. Hannibal knows why he does this, revealing to Will his knife, and it is not just to prove that he is an adequate caretaker of an unruly teen. Hannibal is reminded of the tenderness of their shared moments from the day prior—as he does this to show Will, too, that he can handle anything threatening. Or anyone.

“You would do that for her?”

There is a steady clicking of dog’s nails in the hall, and Hannibal moves forward, slipping the dagger back into the folds of his doublet at the same time he reaches for Will’s shaking hand. His fingers make purchase with Will’s skin, and a thrill of warmth runs him through. He arches his jaw upward, within an arm’s length of being able to pull the Signore’s face down toward him.

“Yes, I would do that for her. And, for you—Will.”

The name slips from his mouth and confirms what has been bursting within him, begging to see the light.

Except Will inhales sharply at his name leaving Hannibal’s lips, moving his body from Hannibal’s reach at the same moment Lazzaro returns to the room with the hounds. Will shifts his shaking hands under covers of his bed, hiding them as if to hide himself. He refuses to meet Hannibal’s eyes.

“I will speak with her, Painter. Go,” Will demands of him, terse.

Hannibal does not understand quickly enough. Thorns twist wickedly into the softness of him, and he cannot help the observation that he sheds light on, now.

“You delight in intimacy, and then berate yourself for the delight.” Hannibal knows he is being harsh, being altogether too loud, too apparent—after all, even the quietest word is far too loud when it is said in a place where it should not be spoken. Will’s eyes are fiery with pride when they meet his, burning clean and betraying what is underneath.

It is fear, pure.

“You delight,” Will hisses. “I tolerate.”

Though he knows that there is something else occurring here, something always kept in the damnable shadows from him, Hannibal cannot help but feel the wound as it rips into him, the sharp edge of these words pricking and pulling—scarring.

“Is that truly how it is, Will?”

“Signore Graham,” Will corrects him bitterly. “And it is. Do not presume to know me, Painter, beyond my proclivity for the arts.”

Only Hannibal cannot let it go, cannot bring himself from Will’s presence like this.

“I do know you beyond—”

Lazzaro interrupts them with a noise, his hand at the pommel of his rapier. Hannibal’s seething eyes dig into the man’s smug face, and he moves to reach underneath his doublet for the bone handle of his dagger.

But Will continues as if he had heard nothing from either of them, as if his next, stunning decree comes not from the moment but is something that has been in the back of his mind, tucked between the cheek and molars of his mouth, for a while.

“From the morrow, set up in the library,” Will begins with a heavy finality, addressing Hannibal. The tone shocks Hannibal into a stand-still, arresting his movements. “Surely someone of your skill won’t need me to sit until you have come to the face.”

Will leans forward and Hannibal can only set his mouth, only watch from his position below. He is reminded of the untouchably high paintings hung within churches, meant to represent the untouchable nature of the Divine, as the hammer cruelly falls from this young man’s beautiful, lethal mouth.

“I do not have your appetite, Signore Lecter. Now, leave me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Morosina_ = sweet girl/sweetheart. Just a cute, gender-affirming pet name.


	10. Consequence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Purposeful misgendering by character, mention of child abuse.

For two long weeks Hannibal is squandered into the confines of the library, the scullery, and his own room. No matter sun nor storm raging outside, there is still no sign, no sight of Will to soothe the ache that grows deeper, larger each day Hannibal goes without. During the day there is only the charcoal eyes’ outline, shadowed in the dead _verdaccio_ greys on his portrait-Will, left two-dimensional as he fills in the colors of the backdrop. During the nights, only the painful ecstasy of his sketch-Will to comfort him into an uneasy sleep.

Filled as his days are with images of Will, yet never the real thing, Hannibal thinks back frequently to the feeling of the younger man’s sweating cheek under his palm, the grip on his thigh, his wrist. He feels Will’s touch ripple into him as a pebble thrown into a lake, the echoes causing waves against his inner shores. He would stay this way all day, endlessly locked in his memories if not for the occasional, welcome company from Tommaso coming to grab a book for a lesson and lingering for conversation, or the timely, proffered meals from Ottavia. They keep him from sinking too deep into his heartache, sharing stories from their days, pasts, thoughts.

However, the subject never lands on Will, despite Hannibal’s attempts to drive conversation there from time to time. Ottavia is able to skillfully sidestep his wiles, while Tommaso clams up in the face of them. But neither gives in, not even when Hannibal does himself and asks them, nearly begs, for some news—for any news of the Signore.

“Has he had any other fits, Tommaso? Is he well?”

She stops her finger’s running over the spines of the mathematics section abruptly, throwing a wide-eyed gaze over her shoulder but not answering.

“Has he asked that you not speak to me of him?”

Slowly, Tommaso’s expression sinks into something like pity, and pain. It is strange, being in this position with a thirteen-year-old. But Hannibal has no other options—made desperate by what he is quite sure now, is love.

“At least tell me if his sutures are healing,” Hannibal requests of Ottavia another day, more than a week into his exile. She looks sorrowfully into his eyes, rests a hand on his arm.

“Did I not once tell you that seeking truth about the Signore will only bring you ruin?” she murmurs. “I am still here, still next to him, Hannibal, so, please. Do not drive yourself mad with this worry and focus instead on your work. The quicker you finish, the quicker you can be rid of it all.”

One particularly frustrating day, Hannibal seeks distraction from his solitude, from even his work, by walking around the library. He has long since finished and returned the medical tomes to their spots on the shelves, and picks over the philosophy, the poetry that Will has in his collection.

He opens a volume to an illuminated panel, fraught with dark, twining images of foreign, snow-covered forest thickets and stags’ antlers like long thorns tearing into the page.

> _Life of my life, you seem to me  
>  Like some pallid olive tree  
>  Or the faded rose I see:  
>  Nor do you lack beauty,  
>  But pleasing in every way to me,  
>  In shyness or in flattery,  
>  Whether you follow me or flee,  
>  Consume, destroy me softly._

Pushing the gilded leather spine of the slim book back into its place, he moves once more toward the far end of the room and falls on the familiar sight of the linen-wrapped frames. Crouching near, Hannibal moves the first frame from its place and pulls back the folds of dusty fabric from it.

It is a family, he notices first—done in the mannerist style of the late Renaissance, with all its stylistically exaggerated and idealized physical forms, blush-light colors. Hannibal positions the frame against the stones of the floor, turning it to the light that comes from the window behind. He does not recognize the signature in the far corner of the canvas, but the closer he looks to the details of the painting, the more he finds the truth of it appear.

A young child sits between two others, adults: a man and a woman. Their complexions are all pale, with the father possessing a strong jaw and fairer coloring than the mother, with her braided ropes of dark brown hair wound in a crown about her head. It is Will between them, a clear product of their conjoined appearances, not yet ten years old.

Hannibal stares at this for a long time, adds this other Will to the collection in his mind.

Around midday on the fourteenth day, Hannibal hears a knock at the door of the library. Assuming it is Ottavia with lunch, he merely calls out, “Come in,” without raising his eyes from the work he performs on the canvas, layering thickly opaque paints with the light, cochineal alumina lake.

“Painter.”

Hannibal’s heart stops for one jarring moment, then sets off skittering at a rapid pace as he lights his gaze on Will, there, stood in the doorway wearing his orpiment yellow coat with its black fur trim stark on his pale neck. He looks much better than the last time he had seen him; resilient, less thin. The dogs surround him on their leashes, sniffing eagerly into the room.

“Signore,” Hannibal manages, stilling the brush in his hand. “How are you?”

“Fine,” Will replies, bending to pet one of his hounds about the ears, scratching. He moves to let them all off their leashes, one by one, and they either wander into the hall or stay near to their master’s bare feet. “Except, well, the sutures. I was wondering if they are alright.”

Hannibal lowers his palette. “Are they inflamed?”

“No,” Will responds. “Nothing like that. I did well to heed your advice.”

Hannibal sighs inwardly. The rush of relief he feels, the rush of fondness mingles distinctly with pain in his heart. If it is so easy for Will to flit in and out of his life—if the younger man is able to be here so simply, after such a terrible separation, Hannibal cannot begin to fathom exactly what he thought had transpired between the two of them on the surface of Will’s sheets all those days ago.

This confusion hardens his words.

“Then you did not come for me to look at the sutures. You only came to look at me.”

Will scoffs at his boldness, yet he draws his arms close against his chest under the guise of adjusting his coat, giving himself away with this one movement. Hannibal simply raises an eyebrow, looking back at the painting, the tip of his brush as it touches at the deep folds in the draperies of Will’s bed.

“I also came to ask you why the Olivetan monks up the hill are under the impression you’re doing religious work for me.”

Hannibal laughs indifferently. “I’d forgotten that is what I told them.”

“Yes,” Will starts coldly, not matching the levity Hannibal has for the situation. “Well, they have not forgotten. I hope you’re able to make something Catholic in addition to this portrait, as they are expecting me to run the draft by them soon.”

“Is that so?” Hannibal asks lightly, as if he had no idea this was how religious works were treated—in need of approval from the powers that be. Will almost rolls his eyes in response.

“Do not play the fool, Painter.”

“You could simply tell them the project was abandoned. Unless—” Hannibal is bringing his eyes back up to Will’s, hesitantly taking his brush from the surface of the canvas. “Is this your way of asking to hire me again?”

Will says nothing, but he does not need to—his intense, chimeral gaze provides words enough for Hannibal. He abandons his palette and brush on the surface of the table, running his fingers through the linen rag over his shoulder and moving from behind the easel.

“You have not even seen the portrait, and still you want this from me?”

Will side steps the question with his own. “What necessitated the lie you told the monks?”

Hannibal chuckles dryly, but his heart is beating ardently, expectantly underneath his ribcage. “I will tell you once you have answered me, Signore.”

Will sighs, turning his body at an avoidant angle, away from Hannibal’s waiting eyes. He pointedly looks out the window behind Hannibal’s back, and swallows.

“I would like to become your benefactor,” he admits. Then his eyes flash over, animalistically trained on Hannibal’s own. “Though it goes against my better judgement.”

Hannibal’s chest swells with a breath he dares not let out. He walks a few steps closer to Will, saying softly, “Calibrate your judgement by looking at the portrait, then. I’ve made much progress during our separation.”

“No.” Will backs away, correcting the distance between them. He whistles at the dogs around him, and they move out into the hall, disappearing. “Now, why go to the library at San Miniato?”

But Hannibal pursues. “Do you not care if I accept or decline?”

“You accept, of course.” Will has little space left to go in the small room, already with sun in his eyes from the rays coming in through the windows, past the pale-yellow damask curtains slung elegantly to the side.

“You’re so sure?”

Hannibal is enjoying this, and a fine fury raises in Will at the transparent pleasure softening his movements, his words. He licks his lips, taking in all the minutiae of this dark creature glowering in front of him, moves to cast his shadow across Will’s face, offer a reprieve from the light.

“Do not make me regret making the offer,” Will bites. “You are still in my employ, regardless.”

“Oh, I do not forget that.”

Hannibal smirks, taking a last, lingering look at Will. Then he turns his back, crossing the carpet underfoot to pick up his palette and brush once again.

“I was looking for information on _Gli Scudi_ ,” he says as he puts the easel between them, continues his work on the cochineal curtains.

Will’s usually pale face becomes paler still at the mention of this name. “Why?” he asks sharply.

“As I was forbidden from observing, I wanted to ascertain what Lazzaro was doing to you—during your seizures.”

“How did you even know to—”

Hannibal shrugs lightly. He is not keen on pinning this revelation on Tommaso, the poor girl, nor Ottavia and her helpfulness during their market trip. He knows Will would not seek retribution, but Hannibal is of the opinion that not even a chastisement is deserved by either of these women, when he of his own volition would have found out, one way or another.

“Did you come to know of them during your imprisonment in Venice?” Will supplies, instead.

Hannibal sets his jaw, once again lowering his brush. “No. But, apparently, they knew of me.”

Will swallows at the sudden lack of humor in Hannibal’s voice, his face.

“They did. They do,” he confirms solemnly—almost apologetically, though he had nothing to do with any of it, and is simply the one who bares this information into the air between them. “They know about—well, those who have committed such offenses. Among others.”

Hannibal watches the younger man for a long moment. He never gets used to the bareness he feels when this subject is brought forth from his past—how close his true self gets to becoming known, being seen, against his will.

“Is that how you see it, Signore, what I did? As an offense?”

Will does not meet his eyes, slipping his hands down into the pockets of his coat. “The law does.”

“I am not asking about the law’s opinion.”

“No, you’re not,” Will sighs. “It is an offense, but—it is not offensive to me, no.”

“You knew these details of my life before hiring me? Before finding me through Signore de Reviello’s niece?”

Will’s expression is austere. “I did.”

“And what did Lazzaro have to say about it?” Hannibal pursues. Though he holds the tools of his trade he does nothing with them, focused intently on Will. “What does he say about your desire to become my benefactor, now?”

Will bites his cheek, staring. “You’ve heard something out of turn, Painter.”

“I do not know that I have—nothing that does not concern me, at least.”

But this does not align with Will’s view of the situation. A dark moment of realization crosses the man’s exquisite features. “You were there. Behind the door.”

Hannibal nods. “Yes, I was.”

“And where else do you hide, in my home?”

“Not… our home?”

“Not yet.” Will’s voice is cold.

At this, Hannibal can only tilt his head curtly, can only speak with a voice like a breeze passing through as he turns his attention back to the canvas.

“It is not Christian, but I am thinking Alexander.”

“Alexander?” Will shakes his head emphatically at this dizzyingly sudden change in subject. “Whatever do you mean.”

“For this painting that the monks desire. The consequence of my lie,” Hannibal clarifies. “You know as well as I how they enjoy dawdling under the guise of chasteness among their important, bare men. Why not give them the truth of Alexander and Hephaestion?”

The icy cleverness in Will’s gaze almost stings him. Hannibal knows his meaning is well understood, and an ire raises in Will’s dark, smooth voice.

“I expected more from you, Painter. This humor of yours is becoming trite.” He turns to leave but Hannibal moves in tandem with his legs, and Will stops abruptly at this mirroring motion.

“And you are a new man,” Hannibal says, reaching out not only with his movements but with his words. “Focused on new techniques, new treatments, new advances.”

Will’s eyes narrow imperceptibly, except Hannibal perceives this. Perceives this and every other minutia that crosses Will’s face, takes up residence in the angles of his body. As he has self-studied those subjects of medicine and sects as of late, he has also studied Will, become an expert in the art of him.

“If not Alexander, then Tarsus’ Saul?”

Will leans against the edge of a bookshelf. “As long as the topic is biblical,” he repeats. He runs a ringed hand through his hair, tired.

“Saul was beloved by Jesus, you know,” Hannibal continues after a moment of watching Will’s weariness. “Wracked as he was by illness, Jesus never once strayed from him, nor he from the prophet. They were, their whole lives, inextricably bonded.”

The exasperation drains from Will’s face. When the younger man regards him, the gaze is blooming with a sweet sorrow, a deep regret.

“Alright,” Will murmurs. “You may, for your first project under my patronage, paint Saint Paul.”

The air hangs heavy in the saturated light of the small room, and Hannibal feels, for the first time in two weeks, soothed. It takes everything in his power not to cross the distance between them to slide his paint-stained fingers against Will’s jaw, bring his lips to his own, and kiss the Signore.

His Signore.

“Show me your arm,” Hannibal requests, voice made gentle by his desire. The younger man stares, then slowly shucks the coat from his shoulders.

Hannibal walks, treading quietly, to lift Will’s arm from his side, pushing the sleeve back. He holds Will’s hand with his left thumb in the palm of it, using his right thumb to caress the already-dissolving silk of the sutures he sewed more than two weeks ago. Hannibal is glad to see no other signs of another bout of bleeding. The skin is clean, pale, with a slight redness to it where the scar still sits in the skin.

Hannibal flicks his eyes up to Will’s, notices the man’s breathing has gone shallow. Will dares not move, those eyes breathtaking and wide before Hannibal.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he raises his Signore’s arm higher, bending at the same moment, to press his lips against the minor roughness of the once-wound. Will inhales sharply but does not move away, does not stop the second press of his lips, nor the third.

Hannibal withdraws his mouth eventually, graciously, rolling the sleeve down and allowing Will’s arm to fall back to his side.

“You will be fine,” he murmurs, shifting Will’s hair back from his cheek with his fingertips. “ _Bell’uomo mio_ ,” he praises as Will stares up at him—keeps staring, for as long as the rhythm Hannibal’s touch lasts.

…

Hannibal weaves between the crowds at _Tabacchi Dorato_ , bringing with him a flagon of wine and three glasses purchased with his own coin. Real florins, a part of his first payment under the patronage of his new benefactor.

“What is this occasion, Hanni? I cannot wait one moment longer for an explanation,” Zanetta says, admonishing, gripping tightly to Paolo as Hannibal takes his time pouring wine for his friends at their usual table in the pub. “We have not seen you in a fortnight, and now you keep your secrets for over an hour as we sit here in suspense.”

Hannibal smiles, taking a seat before his friends, before his glass. He raises it into the air between them.

“I, once more, have a benefactor.”

Paolo’s grin is wide and his laugh loud. Zanetta cries with surprise, asking above the clinking of their cups—“Not the handsome one from before?”

Hannibal chuckles, swallowing a hearty mouthful of wine. “Yes, the handsome one.”

Paolo grasps Zanetta close at her comment and growls playfully, then turns back to Hannibal with a meaningful look. “Congratulations, friend. Truly.”

“Thank you. Now, tell me, what of your lives?”

Zanetta looks from Paolo to Hannibal, her face softening into a sweet smile. At this Paolo relaxes immensely, visibly, and brings a hand up to sweep Zanetta’s hair back from her shoulder in a loving gesture.

“Paolo has asked me to marry him.”

Hannibal feels his chest swell with a breath, and his eyes flick from Zanetta’s to Paolo’s. The definiteness, the triumph of the moment hangs between them like something wreathed. It is early Renaissance pastels, shining golden trumpets, and ribbons.

“We must make a night of this, this wonderful news,” Hannibal beams, reaching for both his friends’ hands. He stands, bending deeply to kiss each upon the cheek before leaving to retrieve another flagon. Paolo raises his glass before drinking the thing, entire, while Zanetta laughs warmly at this gesture.

“I can always agree to that kind of proposition.”

Making his way back to the bar, Hannibal greets Nicolo once more and the man sighs wearily, as is his habit.

“Not you again.”

Hannibal smirks. “Another flagon, please, Nicolo. My friends are to be married.”

“That’s nothing worth celebrating,” Nicolo mutters back, but reaches for the requested item anyway. The grizzled man hands it over to him across the stained, sticky wooden bar, withdrawing his hand before Hannibal can place coin into his palm.

“Drink—be merry. _Abbondanza_ ,” Nicolo demurs gruffly. Hannibal extends his arm and Nicolo sighs once more, but takes it in a firm grip despite this.

“ _Grazie_ , you wonderful man.”

Many glasses later, with some songs sung and dances danced, the three friends relax around their table and work on the beginning of their third flagon—all smiles.

“Painter?”

Hannibal starts at the name, expecting to look up and find Will’s exquisite face regarding him. Instead, it is a man, vaguely familiar, with a Romanesque face and sandy hair.

“Sailor,” Hannibal recalls, sitting forward in his chair. “ _Salve_.”

The man’s light eyes pierce his own. “You remember?”

“Yes—I could never forget a man who steals for me.” Hannibal moves elegantly to make room for the man. “Please, join my friends and I. Do you care for a drink?”

Paolo and Zanetta watch as the sailor takes the seat next to Hannibal, barely suppressing their chuckles. The sailor notices this, asking, “Are you all celebrating something?”

“Yes,” Zanetta confirms proudly. “I am to make Paolo my wife.”

“Forgive us, not for the first time, I’m sure,” Hannibal smiles warmly. “What is your name?”

“Benedetto,” the man replies, his blond lashes catching candlelight. “But I prefer Bene.” He smirks at Hannibal, leaning closer. “And yours?”

“Hannibal,” he smirks back, flicking his eyes over the entirely hale, attractive look the young man has. The sea has treated him as a lover would—lent him strength, and character. He has an ineffable self-possession about him that, in another life, Hannibal would’ve very much liked to strip bare.

“Allow me to retrieve a cup for you,” Hannibal says, but Bene places his hand on Hannibal’s thigh before he manages to stand all the way.

“Thank you, but—I would like to see you look up at me once more,” the man responds, voice rough with a thinly veiled desire. He stands, and Hannibal does just this, his jaw tilting upward as he maintains eye contact, eliciting Bene to bite his own lip before the sailor turns to walk to the bar.

“Someone wants your cock,” Zanetta says, stifling a cackle. But Hannibal just waves his hand with a hesitant smile, shaking his head. He drinks lightly from his glass, savoring the wine as it creeps across the flat of his tongue.

“Why not bring him home, Hanni?” Paolo inquires. “He is nearly begging.”

Hannibal can only shrug, leaning back in his seat once more. “My heart belongs to another, and, with it, my cock.”

Paolo blinks at this. “Your Signore?”

Hannibal nods.

“Does he feel the same?”

But Hannibal does not answer, cannot. Zanetta’s eyes are sad.

“Oh, Hanni.”

“He is afraid of something—someone, I think.”

“You?” Paolo asks.

Hannibal laughs wetly. The wine is bringing the emotion clearly to his features, and Paolo rests a comforting hand on his arm, his usually roguish grin now soft and understanding.

“I do not know. I do not know hardly anything, not nearly enough about his situation. But I believe I have loved him from the first moment I saw him.”

His friends regard him seriously, sitting with him in the center of this emotion.

“Fortune is on our side tonight, Hannibal,” Bene is saying as he regains his seat. Hannibal shifts his expression into one of ease, reaching for the flagon to fill Bene’s cup.

“How is that?” he asks as he pours, aware of the sailor’s wanting focus on his features.

“Well, I found you, didn’t I?”

Hannibal smirks, more to himself. “I did inform you of where I’d be.”

Bene takes a long dreg of wine, placing his cup down closely to where Hannibal’s hand rests on the table. Bene’s eyes run up the length of his arm, graze his torso, before floating up to his own eyes.

“Would you prefer that I inform you of where you will be?”

Hannibal’s smirk deepens. He thinks of Will’s red draperies around his four-poster, thinks of pulling them back and finding the pale sliver of his sleeping body nestled there like a brand-new crescent of moon in the sky. He is drunk enough to consider doing this upon returning to the villa tonight, and the thought sends a thrill through him.

“Perhaps after I return,” Hannibal says, standing. “Excuse me for a moment.”

Hannibal passes through the crowds, past the bar, and up the few steps into the street. It is nearly midnight, and as Hannibal rounds the corner to the side of the building he finds himself between several men drunkenly ambling by. He grasps one’s arm to steady them both, beginning an apology before he is roundly cursed out. He lets go of the man’s arm and he staggers, his friends supporting his weight.

“ _A fanabla_ ,” the man slurs, but there is no real heat left in the tone. Hannibal bows slightly, setting his jaw but continuing on his way, moving to relieve himself of the wine he had drunk off in the cover of the building’s shadow, away from the single streetlamp outside the pub’s door.

The men stand outside the opening of the alley, and Hannibal wonders for a moment if they are not considering coming for him. But they do not seem concerned with where he went, instead stopped by another man they seem to recognize in the street. They are loud, and Hannibal overhears their greetings, one man’s question of, “What are you doing in Florence, Maffeo?”

It seems that only the one man knows this Maffeo well, or cares to find out what he is doing in Florence, as the rest bring themselves down the steps into _Tabacchi Dorato_. Maffeo is smoking tobacco, and his response is a cloud of fumes obscuring his face.

“I’m here to take my _mezza sega_ son home.”

Hannibal finishes, adjusting the fabric of his hose around his hips and choosing to stay in the shadows—for what reason, he does not know. Something irks him about this exchange like an object out of place.

“My wife finally fucked off and died, leaving me with no other male heir. I’ll not have a bastard take my life’s work from me, so it’s back to the first _pezzo di merda_ that shot from these great balls.”

Maffeo grabs his own crotch with a skeletal hand as he says this, laughing a high, weevilly laugh with the other man’s accompaniment.

Then the other is asking as the laughter dies down, “Where is he? Did you not sell him?”

“Aye,” Maffeo responds, “to this old money orphan brat. Three years now in a fancy white house better not’ve spoiled him—made him softer than he was. I’ll have my work cut out for me, I bet, but he weren’t no stranger to the belt before I sold him.”

His friend snorts. “A kid like that worth the money you’d spend to buy back?”

“Who said anything about buying him? No,” the man grunts bluntly, “the house is not well guarded, I know. Shouldn’t be hard to do with this.”

He pulls a shining roundel from the sheath at his belt, and Hannibal knows at once what will happen if Maffeo reaches Villa della Osso Bianche. Tommaso will be taken, subjected once more to this man unfit to call himself a father—and anyone else who gets in the way will be injured, or perhaps, killed.

Hannibal cannot have that.

He moves forward silently from the shadow, and the men turn once his face is brought into stark relief by the blazing oil streetlamp above. The man is dark, short, and broad—while Maffeo is willowy, wire-strong, with light features that have a disconcerting quickness in them.

“ _Che cazzo_ ,” Maffeo scoffs after taking in the expression on Hannibal’s face. He smokes deeply from his newsprint-rolled cigarette. “Do I know you, _coglione_?”

Hannibal advances without taking his eyes off the man, watching as his features slip from confidence to bitter alarm, and Hannibal is pulling forth from his doublet the bone handle of his dagger with an impetus behind him like a flood flowing up from the banks, overtaking—the blade slashing shallowly across the thick neck of his friend before Hannibal descends on Maffeo with all his clean, drunken fury.

The stout friend reels away, yelling, the spaces between his fingers soaking with blood, leaking. Hannibal can see this from the corner of his eye as he slashes now at Maffeo and the man jumps quickly away—his cigarette falling from his boney fingers as he reaches for his own weapon.

With a shout Maffeo lunges, and Hannibal must step wildly to avoid the fast attack of the sharp roundel. He was not expecting this competence from the abusive, thin man, and that misjudgment earns him a near-miss as a second lunge brushes close to his chest. A deep gash of a smile reveals Maffeo’s tobacco-blackened teeth, and Hannibal must put himself on the defensive, their dance moving both of their bodies in front of the pub, their machinations against one another lit daylight-bright by the streetlamp.

“ _Ti spacco il culo_ ,” Maffeo pants with a smirk, and Hannibal knocks another slice to the side, seeing his opportunity.

His blade meets the resolute resistance of rib bone, and as Hannibal withdraws Maffeo, screaming with pain and rage, is able to nick through his inner thigh’s hose. Without missing a step Hannibal lunges once more, arresting the sweep that reaches down from above with the flat edge of his forearm. This time his blade seeks its source, slipping between Maffeo’s ribs and up into the squishing softness of his heart. The smallest sound of pain exits Maffeo’s mouth—so quiet that Hannibal almost misses it.

Breathing heavily, Hannibal lets out a shuddering shout of triumph as Maffeo’s body falls from him and hits the cobbles of the street with a wet, resounding thump.

“Hanni!” Zanetta calls.

She and Paolo, flanked by a no longer amorous Benedetto stand at the entrance to _Tabacchi Dorato_ along with other spectators, their eyes wide. Hannibal realizes that the man he had first slashed at has long gone from the area, and in the distance there is the fine sound of wooden police rattles ratcheting, calling, convening upon what is now a crime scene.

Hannibal does not think much as his friends grab him and begin to run into the night. Nothing, really, besides that this was not the first life his hands have brought to an end—but it will be in the eyes of the law.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, some murder! Quoted poem by Torquato Tasso (the poet after whom the square Hanni lives near is named). And as infantile as it sounds police did use rattles before whistles were loud enough, so sorry, but I don’t make the rules.
> 
>  _bell’uomo mio_ = my beautiful boy/man  
>  _a fanabla_ = go to hell  
>  _mezza sega_ = half saw --> wimpy  
>  _pezzo di merda_ = piece of shit  
>  _che cazzo_ = what the fuck  
>  _coglione_ = testicle --> fool  
>  _ti spacco il culo_ = I’ll fuck you up
> 
> S/O to matildaparacosm for the help with Italian! <3


	11. Carcere della Stinche

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Detailed description of a public execution and squalid living conditions.

The law is approaching from every alleyway, and Hannibal can do nothing except put his hands to Paolo, grabbing the scruff of his garments. With his right hand he slips, invisible, his knife into Paolo’s doublet by the hilt, and a subtle look of understanding passes between them before Hannibal pulls back, brings his fist down in a heavy, convincing swing. _Keep it safe_ , he says with his eyes as he lets Paolo go to stagger against the cobbles from the fake hit—a move that brings him in one motion from _accomplice_ to _second victim_.

Then, they are on Hannibal so much as a squid, with many arms detaining him. There is a strike to his head, and all goes black.

He wakes with a ringing in his ears and something dripping across the fevered skin of his face. There is a dank, slippery wooden bench underneath him, and as he reels, he falls from the side of its meager width.

Landing on the fetid cobbles underneath, cradling his throbbing head, Hannibal knows at once he is in prison.

Carcere delle Stinche, named after the portion of the body easiest to break for capture, lies north of the Arno, close enough to its banks to smell the fresh catch being brought into market—if one could smell anything past the decay housed within its impossibly tall walls.

There is a particular feeling, being inside a prison—one Hannibal has never quite forgotten even though his last incarceration had been in his youth. It is loam and lowering, a sinking like being in the hull of the slowest capsizing ship as hope becomes a dimmer and dimmer sun above the swallowing waves.

Around are men, women, children, the sane and insane, the violent and the weak all within reach of one another, ambling, teeming, fighting, dying. All are groaning in hunger and thirst, sticking their filth-covered arms from the portcullis on the outermost edges of the place in order to receive alms from any Christian soul passing by. More often than not they receive more abuse, instead of salvation so desperately needed.

Being here, now, the past and present blur, conjoining into one uninterrupted stream of stimuli. Only, as Hannibal collects himself in a corner, away from whatever odious dribble had been falling onto him in his forced sleep, he is acutely aware that there is no old man Aloysius and his gifts of long conversations on philosophy, his friendship, nor his knives—and less of a chance that Paolo will, for a second time, be able to sell all his belongings and bribe for him a path to his freedom. Even his Signore may not be able to reach Hannibal, for, unlike his first offense of sodomy, that of murder is more likely to go unpardoned.

He sees many fights before the sun sets that day, but does not join in. There is no water so he cannot scrub his hands of Tommaso’s father’s blood, and hour by hour the stains deepen, indelible. In the night he can see the stars, and for the few hours of sleep he gets he dreams for the first time in a very long while of Venice’s Ducale, and of Aloysius.

The old man’s white hair sways in thick, matted plaits as he is marched up the gibbet. Though he is pulled by the guards on either side of him, he remains possessed of his person, setting his own measured gait toward the waiting noose.

The eager, stinking crowd that presses to Hannibal’s back, attempting to catch a glimpse of the execution, move him against the iron portcullis and causes the knife hidden in his clothing to bite into his skin. Aloysius’ knife, with a bone handle, inscribed on the blade with a nihilistic phrase in Latin. He would never tell Hannibal how he kept it, snuck it into the prison—just slipped it into his possession with a small smile a few hours before he was collected, as if he knew he would soon have no more use for it.

He stands now, as the noose wraps around his neck, tall and serene. As Hannibal grips the edge of the portcullis so tightly that he feels his skin break, Aloysius is looking about the piazza. Hannibal extends his bloody, bleeding palm out into the scant sun offered between the tall buildings, hoping his friend will lay eyes upon him one last time.

He calls out with a broken voice, “Aloysius!”

Their eyes meet despite the distance. A slow smile spreads across the old man’s mouth and his lips move with words that Hannibal cannot quite make out.

Then the floor gives way. The crack of his neck echoes around Hannibal’s skull, even later, walking with Paolo once his friend has arranged for him to be freed—paid his crime’s fine.

“It easily could have been you and I, friend,” Paolo tells him, his shaded face cutting, for once, a serious expression. He helps Hannibal along, who is hunger-weak and unused to walking over uneven cobbles, up and across narrow bridges over the waterways. “Of course, I am here for you. I always will be.”

They return to a bare room, bereft of Paolo’s treasures, the items of his burgeoning trade.

In the morning Hannibal dares move from his corner in Le Stinche, bringing himself up in the relative quiet of dawn to look from beyond the walls. There is the top arch of Santa Croce from the southeastern side, reminding Hannibal of the view of San Miniato from Signore Graham’s villa—its white façade almost glowing in the soft sun. And from the northwestern windows, the golden dome of Santa Maria del Fiore crests the horizon like some impossible second sun.

…

He is woken from a doze by someone grasping his arm painfully. He is lifted to his feet and sees that it is a guard, there, dragging him until he finds strength enough to pull his legs underneath him, match the pace. The manhandling reminds him of the stairs to the gibbet and he thinks, feels like a knife through his guts, _I will never see Will again_.

The sunlight is blinding in his face, strong. He almost does not see who stands before him as he is thrown by the guard into the street.

“It is the among the rudest of infractions to ignore summonses from your benefactor, Painter.”

Hannibal holds a hand up to the evening sun’s rays streaming against his face, finds the outline of Will’s orpiment coat and its black fur trim. Feels a dog’s wet snout pressing into his filthy fingers.

“I have, regretfully, been indisposed.”

Will’s eyes run over the length of him and he is calling, “Winston,” to bring the dog from bothering his person further. On its leash, it returns to its master’s side—his master, who is, for the first time in Hannibal’s presence, wearing something other than silk bedclothes and bare feet.

Will holds out for him a wedge of Ottavia’s white bread, and a skin of rainwater. As he drinks, the water running in rivulets down the stark line of his throat, Hannibal hears Will begin to speak.

“You should come back at once, to the villa.”

Hannibal does not know why he stands there, unmoving, except that he is stinking—feels even dirtier, now, in the presence of Will’s immaculate beauty.

“You don’t want me to have anything in my life that’s not you,” Hannibal jests, beginning to move in a stilted gait from the shadow of Le Stinche.

“I wouldn’t consider being imprisoned as having something,” Will responds, cross, and not in the mood. But still he follows, silent for a moment before asking, “Are you alright?”

Hannibal tilts his head, regarding Will from the corner of his eye as he tears into the bread. It is an indignity to be seen like this, but he is trying to shoulder it well for as long as he must. He is leading them southwest, to Via Calimala and Terme di Capaccio, to bathe.

“Yes, thank you, Signore,” he responds crisply, intent on putting as many steps between himself and the prison as possible. “I assume there was a fine, and it was not my death they wanted?”

Will does not say anything, but his eyes are troubled. Winston jogs along happily by his side, between them, and Hannibal wonders if the beast has ever been within the city before, with all its sights and smells.

“Well, forgive me, but I must ask of another pittance for entrance into the public baths. You do not wish me to return to your villa in this state and befoul it.”

He cannot believe that the last time he saw Will, these hands of his took his Signore’s skin against them, raised that arm to his mouth, kissed—

Will’s eyes possess a modicum more seriousness than usual, and he reaches out to arrest Hannibal’s movements with his hand not holding a leash, grabbing his wrist.

“I am your benefactor,” Will states firmly, as if this could be forgotten, “so whether it is a fine or a pittance—if it is yours, it is mine to pay.”

His fingertips dig into Hannibal’s flesh—he is not afraid to touch him, to look at him, to stand near him. Hannibal relaxes at this, slightly, comforted. He nods in understanding.

An overjoyed attendant welcomes Winston under his wing, while another shows them past the Roman columns into the interior of the bath. Hannibal, glad to be free of Le Stinche’s high walls and to have them substituted with such clean, clear architecture opening against the darkening evening sky, tilts his head upwards and breathes in deeply the steam of the wide, shallow pools. Undercut by mosaics of differing blues, ochre yellows, and the rare tiles of red, the waters rippled by bodies of other bathers distorts images there of gods and goddesses, and pastoral scenes of flora and fauna. Echoes of liquid sounds run, skitter off the high columns and half-enclosures, causing an almost soothing cacophony of everyday life.

Hannibal takes his time washing himself at a spigot before entering the shared pools, cleansing from his skin the filth of the prison and the act that brought him there—watching it soak into stone, run in dark rivulets away from him.

He loses sight of Will during this moment of introspection, turning with his soiled clothing in hand and padding over the stone walkway to a nearby pool. That is where he finds the man once more, undoing the laces at the front of his tunic. It is a garment Hannibal has not seen before; as are the leather sandals he bends to untie from about his ankles.

Almost as if aware of being watched, Will brings his eyes up as he straightens his spine, gaze landing on Hannibal’s as it lingers on his bared form. His eyes shift like the mists hanging over the heated waters, bringing his clothing up to fold it against the edge of his sylphlike body. He does not break the gaze save to turn, stow his garments in the nearby system of shelves.

With his clothing tucked away, Will gives Hannibal a final look before turning his back, stepping into the pool ledge by ledge, bringing him deeper into its surface, deeper into its center. The surface tension of the water accommodates his form, his movements causing ripples as the water moves from his slender thighs to his scarred hips, sinking in at the crux of his narrow waist. Will keeps his hands up, dry, initiating a bend at the elbow as he descends, glides, further. His shoulder blades are sharp against his spine, Hannibal sees—the elegant arch of his neck and the curls that lay at the nape like something poets have spent their whole lives trying to capture with words.

Hannibal follows Will into the water moments later, silently joining him in a unbusy, empty corner of the bath. Will’s eyes follow him as he takes up residence against the wall of the tub, leaning back to rest his head as Will has, outside of it. The water laps up to Will’s throat because he has sunk down, allowed his arms underneath, and bent his legs—and Hannibal does the same.

He tries not to think of all the scars, bruises left from bleedings, falls, and things unknown peppering Will’s skin as they sit there in the warm water, relaxing. If he thinks too long, he is afraid the desire to caress each one, bring them to his mouth, will become too overwhelming to deny.

“Do you know?” Hannibal asks after many moments, moving his gaze from the undulating water to Will’s profile.

Will pauses, eyes flicking up to Hannibal’s. “Not in detail. Your friend, Paolo, came to me. It is because of him that I knew where to find you. But before his visit, I thought perhaps you had—changed your mind.”

Hannibal blinks sympathetically at the uncharacteristic admittance from his Signore. He matches the truth of it with a truth of his own, owing the other man that much. Much more than that much.

“I have not,” Hannibal intones, voice low, “changed my mind.”

Will’s face remains still. He is waiting, Hannibal realizes—waiting for the explanation to sprout from Hannibal’s mouth so much as seedlings sprout from the ground each spring.

But it is not elegant, this confession. It is, and was, necessity, protection, determination.

“I killed Tommaso’s father.”

Will’s shifting makes a gentle splashing sound. He is surprised, first, trying to figure out how Maffeo came to be in Florence—so far as it was from the farm where he had found Tommaso. Hannibal continues.

“I—encountered him at a pub. He was talking—bragging—of how he would steal Tommaso back. Take her from your education, and her future, and force her to come to heel.”

Will’s jaw jumps, its fine, grinding musculature making the bone of it all the more stark.

“That was not necessary. You know I would not let any harm befall Tommaso.”

Hannibal brings forth a wet hand to run over his face, and up through the damp hair at the crown of his head. “I do not know, though. No one mortal can ensure anything, Signore—only Death has that ability.”

Will does not say anything, merely sets his mouth in a line. A sigh comes from his nose, his chests’ movements disturbing the water around them. Hannibal cannot decide if it is disappointment, irritation, or something else.

“Are you that appalled by deserved violence?” Hannibal asks coolly. “Have you never wished to sink your teeth into someone’s throat? Felt as though wrongs could be righted by your own hand’s doing?”

“Never.” The tone is final, and Hannibal knows that he has struck a nerve. The observation it alludes to borders on the critical—critical of Will’s household, of Lazzaro, of whatever secrets are being so adamantly kept from Hannibal. Of Will’s oscillation in his actions, perhaps his feelings, toward him.

However, this does not deter him. With some mixture of frustration and sadness, Hannibal continues.

“Then your true nature is suppressed.”

Will holds his proud, beautiful face high, refusing to take his fiery eyes from Hannibal’s gaze—daring.

“Nature is violence, Will. Beauty is violence, too, so I thought you would have been well acquainted.”

A red heat rushes into Will’s sallow cheeks at this sordid compliment. He turns his face away.

“You do not know me, Painter.”

“I think I do, for I have the hard-won scars on my heart to prove it.”

Hannibal’s hand finds Will’s beneath the surface of the water, clasping. Will allows this gesture for a long moment, leaning back against the edge of the tub with a silent ripple.

Clean, now, they collect Winston from the attendant who wistfully hugs the hound for a final time, then they are crossing Ponte Vecchio to the southern side of the Arno. They stand at a crux of a road and Hannibal begins to move toward the right, Will toward the left.

“Where are you going?” Will calls.

“There is someone I must see,” Hannibal responds into the dusk air. “Come, if you’d like.”

Soon Winston is once more at his heels, and, along with him, Will.

…

Hannibal opens the heavy door to his hovel, eyes lighting on the surface of the small table to his right where Paolo has left him his knife. He strides forward to begin changing, collecting a cleaner tunic from the back of a chair to swap it for his current one.

As he does this, Gio emerges from the shadows in the far corner of the room.

“Have you been absolutely starving for attention in my absence, _patatino_?” Hannibal titters, bending over the cat, rubbing his ears as the thing pushes vehemently back up against his touch. “No, of course not. You have been just fine on your own, you vicious little beast.”

Soon the room is filled with an ardent purring.

“Oh, and what have you brought me?” Hannibal asks, spotting the dead bird in the corner of the room. Hannibal picks the weightless thing up by a broken wing, sees the blood on its breast. “Gio,” he chides proudly, turning toward Will after a moment.

“Signore, is he not the keenest hunter you have ever seen?”

Will does not know how to answer. He stands still, for the first time almost awkward, in the corner of the room with Winston at his feet. His intense eyes do not quite know where to land, so eventually they choose Hannibal himself. Hannibal is aware of the other man taking him in, in his natural habitat, after all the time they have spent in one another’s presence.

“When I came back from your villa, that first time,” Hannibal continues casually, despite this close scrutiny, “Gio had left me quite a special bird. I think he may have missed me desperately.” Hannibal flicks his gaze to Will’s, incisive. “Are you, perhaps, aware of how he felt?”

Will does not meet this question with an answer. “You are in my employ. That has not changed—Even though it is probably smarter of me to reconsider.”

“Yes, this is true,” Hannibal cannot help but smile. “It might be in your best interest to terminate me.”

Will’s face remains unchanged at this jest, though his eyes run over Hannibal’s bared chest, shoulders, arms. “Your humor is an acquired taste.”

Hannibal’s smile tilts into a smirk as he stands. “Are you learning to appreciate its flavor?”

They do not have long to sit in this, as Gio and Winston are at once keenly aware of one another’s presence. Winston whines lightly as Gio approaches in a swaggering overstep, trying to hide behind his master’s thin legs. Both Hannibal and Will watch as Gio, undeterred, sidles his body close to the dog.

Winston, not knowing the trap that lays in wait for him, bravely brings his snout into the cat’s reach to investigate. No sooner does he do this than is Gio swatting with a full paw of claws, then prancing away—out the propped open window on the back wall of Hannibal’s hovel.

Hannibal laughs lightly. Will is not so amused.

“If you’re finished with your visit, we should be returning.”

Hannibal pulls his tunic over his head, righting the fabric against his arms.

“The streets here are not safe at night.”

Will’s gaze narrows. “You’ve faired just fine.”

“Because I can fight, and, because I look the way I do, yes.”

“And what do I look like to your neighbors, then?”

Hannibal delves his eyes into Will’s, gaze bordering on the salacious. “I wonder.”

Will suppresses a shiver.

“You could dress in some of my clothing,” Hannibal offers, putting some distance between them. “But you still do not know how to fight, nor defend yourself. Your features would give you away—your finer details.

“If you could fight,” he finds himself saying almost wistfully, “it would be different. But as it is, you are unsafe unless you are indoors.”

“So, accompany me,” his Signore says again, pointedly. In his eyes is an indiscernible emotion. Hannibal studies this look a long moment before responding lightly.

“I fear that even your vast fortune would not deter the law from marching me up the gibbet, should I get into any more public brawls.”

Will’s feeling of being rebuked is clear in the tone of his voice. “Then perhaps you should cease brawling, Painter.”

Hannibal sighs, regarding Will gravely, now.

“Will you not once use my given name?” he asks in earnest. “You know that I did not willingly disappear from your villa, and I am sorry to have worried you into such a state, Signore, but believe me, I do not have an endless supply of mirth from which to draw, and this coldness of yours wounds me.”

Will’s eyes soften, and he nods.

“ _Grazie_ ,” Hannibal replies, then stretches over to the table, grabbing some items and moving to sit. A few near-wizened apples lay upon the tabletop from days prior, with a flagon of wine, as well as the remaining rind of a cheese wrapped in its cloth.

Will moves lightly, Winston trailing him, to settle onto the surface of Hannibal’s mattress.

“I know it is not much, but I hope you can accept this meal.” He moves to cut both the apples and rind into slices with his knife. “It is really better to eat something before bed, so one is not troubled by hunger pains in the night.”

When another refutation does not reach his ears, Hannibal brings his gaze to Will’s face. The man’s eyes are curious, watching him handle the knife, as he makes himself comfortable.

“Is that the knife you—used to kill Tommaso’s father?”

Hannibal brings a slice of apple to his lips, transported by the blade. He sinks his teeth into the flesh with a sharp snap.

“It was,” he replies.

“Please keep it from me,” Will requests. Hannibal has never heard a more serious tone leave the man’s mouth before, free of disdain, and Hannibal is all at once unsure what to do.

“Tell me,” Hannibal says softly, placing the knife against the tabletop and out of view. “Whatever this is—It is not simply about me, nor my knife.”

Will just draws himself under the sheet on the bed, shivering. “Perhaps another time,” the man says, sliding wearily down onto his side. He props himself up by an arm, resting his head against the heel of his hand, as Winston sidles near the bend of his knees.

Hannibal is troubled but cannot deny how good it is to see Will like that. Especially there.

They eat and drink, Winston making a snack of the bird Gio had left behind while his master and Hannibal speak of other things. Soon Hannibal sees Will’s eyelids become heavy.

“Would you like to sleep?”

Will stirs. “In your bed?” he asks, as though he were not already in it. Hannibal chuckles, finding this tiredness of Will’s, for once not borne of illness, endearing.

“Yes, in my bed.”

Will sighs, settling deeper into the mattress. He throws an arm absently around Winston, carding his fingers through the beast’s rust-golden fur.

“I lied to Lazzaro about where I went, today.”

“Oh?” Hannibal asks, bemused. But Will does not smile, and seems rather troubled about this, so he continues more seriously.

“I will not presume to know anything about your relationship, but, know that I am not afraid of him. I am not afraid, so if you are, you should not be, either.”

Will hums, deep in his throat. “You wish to protect me, Hannibal?”

“Yes, _vita mia_ , I do,” he replies. “I will.”

Despite his best efforts, Will soon falls asleep.

Hannibal stays awake most of the night with only the light from the moon, studying his Signore’s sleep softened face, trying to puzzle it out.

…

Hannibal wakes, lying against the table, to a padded paw against his cheek, and just the barest hint of claw extended to ensure he awakes.

Blinking, Hannibal meets Gio’s even, open gaze. The cat pats his cheek once more, twice more, then withdraws with a soft chirrup. Food, the cat is demanding, patient, for now. Hannibal chuckles groggily, bringing a hand up to pet the scoundrel’s ears. Then he stands, turning to look at his bed.

Will has left with Winston, his mattress empty. Hannibal then notices some of the man’s opulent clothing in a pool on his floor, and that one of his own tunics is gone. Amongst the rushes there are thick curls of hair, and a note tucked carefully between a fold of fabric. His knife has moved in the night, laying in a different position against the tabletop, and holds some wisps of what Hannibal can only assume are his Signore’s oiled curls.

Hannibal bends to pick up the note between two fingers, reading.

 _Tomorrow morning_ , the note says in the familiar high and narrow hand. _A new portrait_.

Hannibal picks up a shorn curl with his fingertips, bringing it to his nose with an irrepressible grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Patatino_ = potato, a term of endearment.  
>  _Vita mia_ = my life, a very serious, very sweet term of endearment.


	12. A Beast From The Sea...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is certified NSFW, y’all. 8k, yeehaw.

The next morning, Hannibal makes his way up the marble steps to the bone-white façade of the villa, enjoying the fresh breeze found at such great heights above the city. The journey is different than the many other times he had ascended to Will’s home—the anticipation similar but altogether changed by the freshness of early spring and the many ways he and Will have met and separated lately: conjoined, and fought, and pushed away from one another only to fling their arms out once more.

Yet the Arno is still sparkling, crystalline. The sands are white, and the fishing boats spotting the waters are amusing miniatures sailing lazily about.

It is a fine morning, indeed.

Hannibal moves through the hall, its familiar trajectory toward the Signore’s chambers. Tommaso, who had been there to greet him at the door, clings to his arm now, beaming up at him as they walk. He returns the joy on the girl’s face fondly, as pleased to see her as she is him.

Tommaso leaves him outside of Will’s chamber doors, moving down the hall to join Ottavia in the scullery and tell her of his return. Hannibal waits until she has disappeared until he turns back to the double doors, breathing deeply. Then he knocks, firmly, twice.

There has been a palpable shift in the usual storm cloud Lazzaro casts with his presence in the room. He regards Hannibal with the same amount of ire as before, but it has been twisted, distorted. There is something like acknowledgement that Hannibal has within him not only the sexual sins of his youth, but also the murderous sins of his present—and is more than capable of exercising such strength if tested, if their previous clash had not already cemented this in the other man’s mind.

“Lazzaro,” Hannibal says simply.

Lazzaro’s eyes narrow and his jaw sets. “Painter.”

Hannibal steps forward to enter and for one moment it seems as though the older man will not allow it. Then Hannibal regards him—they measure one another up, close, know they could bring it to blades once again, and decide not to. Hannibal brushes past, wary of any move from Lazzaro, but focused forward and intent on taking in his Signore’s visage.

He has found his missing tunic—It hangs loosely from Will’s shoulders, almost billowing, for though their height may not be too much different, the younger man is less broad of the shoulder and chest than Hannibal himself. Hannibal is delighted to see Will in the garment, admiring the way it folds and dapples over Will’s slim, beautiful limbs where he sits amongst the sheet of his bed, his hounds.

And that is when Hannibal’s pupils dilate to take it in: that Will’s curls are no more, and his hair is cropped close into a dark brown fuzz, almost to the point of bareness, revealing simultaneously the soft lines and the severity of his striking features. Those shifting eyes have taken on a ferocity, stark as they are, now, revealed. Hannibal’s cock aches with desire as he shamelessly drinks in this visceral, primal change.

“My stars, Will,” Hannibal exclaims, his feet bringing him unconsciously closer to the vision in front of him. “Is this what use came of my knife while I slept?”

Will’s gaze does not waver, nor does he respond. He is waiting for something, and Hannibal realizes what it is as he measuredly moves to set up his palette, his paints. The work takes no time at all, Hannibal’s heart racing as he goes about this banal ritual, waiting on tenterhooks to see what Will will do.

No sooner than he finishes is Will saying in a clear voice, eyes not moving from Hannibal’s own, “You may go, Lazzaro.”

The man standing resolutely by the door has a hitch of hesitation in his usually measured movements. Hannibal slides his gaze to Lazzaro, daring him to argue with a hand passing obliquely over the front of his doublet, above where his knife sleeps. At first Lazzaro looks like he may refuse, then bends stiffly into a shallow bow.

He moves to exit as Hannibal stands, poised, watching. When Lazzaro turns once in the hall, moving to shut the doors, they meet eyes in the needle-slim space between them, just before the doors snap closed.

Then, Hannibal’s eyes lay once more upon Will’s visage. He loses track of how long he stares, grasping his palette knife in one hand, forgoing placing the tool to the surface of the canvas and looking down—he does not dare do anything that would require his gaze to leave his Signore. There is an infinite space in which he must take in this new young man and the haunting triumph laid deep into those eye sockets, the soft brutalism threatening against the dark whisper of hair on the crown of that perfect head.

“You were beautiful like an angel, before, Will,” Hannibal finds himself murmuring. “And now, you are beautiful like the Devil.”

The ears that hear his praise are Will’s, and Will’s alone. That reserved, expectant expression finally changes at these words. It opens like a bloom, vibrant, honied, dripping with golden pollen. The full pout peels back to reveal sharp canines, the barest hint of a wet, pink tongue moving behind them. Those chimeral eyes are crinkled around the edges, and a flush of delight pours itself readily into the apples of his stubbled cheeks.

Will is, for the first time in his presence, viciously pleased.

…

The change in Will is a marked one as Hannibal sets to creating a new image of his Signore—one of Saul in the middle of infernal, fitful ecstasy before Damacus, before divine revelation. Instead as a youth, wracked as he is by the strength of an unknowable illness—an illness preparing him to receive greatness.

Lazzaro remains dismissed through the days, and Hannibal and Will spend these many hours alone together within Will’s chambers. Hannibal enjoys revealing in bits and pieces the messiness of his painter’s life; telling him long, winding stories of bars and brawls and his days spent with the destitute models of the many works done in his youth—before de Reviello, before Florence became an afterthought, and he was very much a drop of blood within the stream of the city’s veins.

The change in Will’s demeanor is stark, and dizzying. He allows Hannibal, now, to position him every which way he chooses—to be laid on a linen sheet against the floor, or propped here and there over benches so much like a liquid eel: his body uncovered from the waist up, draped in scarves, moved with the practiced gentleness of a painter searching for the correct composition to bring something to life on against his canvas.

As he does this, pacing between Will and the canvas, Hannibal speaks about transcendental passion, violence, nature, and the usual sly jibs suggesting the always-present undercurrent of sex. Will is rapt to his every word, relaxed and yet ever ready to combat, as if his voice were an ambrosia and he required it to live from one moment to the next—hung always together in this tumultuous limbo of words and work, traded questions, and piqued curiosities.

Hannibal, too, finds himself wanting to be pleasing to Will, now more so than ever. Wanting to hear about Will’s knowledge of finer things, Will’s opinions on religion, politics, business, history. Surprisingly, they rarely speak about art, but when they do it is like a sweeping, deep romance, like it is breath itself that they can share, breathe in at once and in tandem—as if the topic were a bed upon which they can touch one another, please one another, give one another release upon, over and over again.

Will asks him of Utrecht as Hannibal positions his _mano figa_ against his sternum, fondling the strange red-thread bead before bringing his eyes up to study Will’s expression. This, too, is entirely new—the dark peach fuzz of his hair making it so. Hannibal did not fail to notice the small, shallow divot in Will’s skull upon the advent of his cut curls, though he finds it impossible to ask of Will how, and what, manifested the strange marking.

For, there are still things there in the shadows of their discussions, waiting to be revealed. Arenas that Hannibal knows not to enter—only sidle near, to earn the satisfying, dark flash of warning that raises into Will’s chimeral eyes.

“I was there for the French occupation, and the storm of 1674,” Hannibal tells him. “I watched a tower of _Domkerk_ fall as if, offending God, was swiped aside by His hand.”

“Why did you leave?” Will asks, looking up to meet his eyes.

Hannibal adjusts the linen drop cloth around Will’s arm, trailing his fingers down to the tendons of Will’s hand, his knuckles.

“The French looted everything, devastating the city,” Hannibal tells him. “There was no one to pay me for my work, so I made way to Venice via the Rhine.”

“And how did you come to learn Italian?”

Hannibal clears his throat, moving to stand behind the easel. This time, too, Will has requested that the painting not be shown to him until it is finished. Hannibal finds an appealing, delayed eroticism in this, and is more than happy to comply with the younger man’s wishes.

“A bit from painting, while studying. We learned all technical terms in Italian, and eventually I found some of your countrymen within my travels through the Holy Roman Empire.”

“You have been a long time away from home. Do you miss speaking your mother tongue?”

“Sometimes,” Hannibal says, picking up his palette knife and laying in thick swathes of textured shadow into the spaces surrounding sketch-Will’s form. “But Frisian is still what I dream in. You have even spoken it to me, Will.”

Will blinks, eyes upturned as if in prayer. “I am in your dreams, Hannibal?”

Hannibal must lick his bottom lip between his teeth to soothe the ache in him at the look upon Will’s face.

“Yes, _vita mia_. You are.”

…

The spring storms break, and with their ending, something burrowed underneath Hannibal’s skin begins itching, wriggling to unearth itself as the cross breezes from open windows billow through the villa and bring with them the sweet scents of budding, breathing nature.

The truth is that Hannibal, in the ink of every night after long days with Will, turns his face into his pillow with an ardent sigh. He breathes in deeply the fabric, the headiness of his own scent, and searches for Will’s within it—if only Will’s were within it—expecting to catch a sliver there of Will’s scent in the heart of his own. It seems like the impossible could be made possible by the sorcery of his desire alone, as touched as his days are by the other man’s presence—as spinning as his world has become around the epicenter of Will’s enduring form.

One day during lunch, Hannibal can no longer abide remaining inside Will’s chambers during such beautiful bouts of sunlight streaming into green grasses and the golden city alike. Having received a piece of mail, slipped into his hands by Tommaso’s own just a few days prior, Hannibal knows what to do.

“Don’t you crave change, Will?” he asks the young man, moving from the window to pace near the foot of Will’s bed. “Let me take you to sesto Oltrarno once more.”

Will regards him over the lip of his wine glass. It has not been a full week yet since his last seizure, and the circles under his eyes have only just begun to lighten. But he did not keep Hannibal from him as he was kept before—and Hannibal learned how to take care of Will because of this allowance.

“What would you have me see?”

“A wedding.”

Will balks slightly at this, not expecting such a grand answer. Hannibal continues to touch at the canvas, focused intently.

“My good friends are marrying on the morrow, and I would enjoy your company to the event,” he continues. “Do not worry about clothing—I can provide some appropriate things.”

“Are my own garments somehow inappropriate?”

Hannibal raises an eyebrow, looking Will over. His chest bared, and the waistband of his silk bed pants pulled snug around his hips, dangerously low. Will does not react to this gaze except drink deeply again from his wine, sighing.

“I consent. We should take a break, anyway—you do not mention it, but I can see that your wrist is troubling you.”

…

In the soft heat of midday, Hannibal trades coin for wine outside the cellar entrance to _Tabacchi Dorato_ , squeezing Nicolo’s arm in a warm gesture before he pulls the crate of flagons into his grip. Will watches on, silent, curious, and managing to keep his darkness despite the bright sun, clothed yet again in one of Hannibal’s tunics and one of his own more demure doublets in a shade of pale, icy blue. Its high collar against the sharp, exposed angle of his jaw is divine, and Hannibal finds his gaze moving frequently to take it in as they start walking to the square for the event. He notices Will’s jewelry, too, has been pared back—just some unadorned silver chains, rings, and hoops through the lobes of his ears.

“You have already met the bridegroom Paolo?” Hannibal confirms, not yet told of this story to any suitable length. He hoists the crate higher in his arms as Will regards him, keeping time to his strides over the cobbles.

“Yes.” Will cannot resist turning his gaze around the alleys and roadways, as unfamiliar as they are. Yet his gaze always finds its way back to Hannibal’s own. “He was distraught but shared a—similar sense of humor to yours.”

“Which is to say you found him off-putting.”

Will separates his lips, and then presses them together.

“I was grateful for his information. He cares for you.”

Hannibal picks up on the subtleties of this statement. “Does it puzzle you as to how someone could come to care for me?”

Will’s look is dark, and he does not deign to answer.

“Well, Signore, Zanetta—the bride—already finds you entirely interesting simply from your visage.”

“How does she know of my visage?”

They ascend a small hill, and the earthenware flagons make a deep clinking noise as they rattle about in the crate to Hannibal’s steady pace.

“I have drawn you, of course. Many times.”

Will stares at him without stopping, until an opening on the horizon of tall tenement buildings falling away brings them to a square, and forces the sun into his bright eyes.

The celebration is already underway, deep into the afternoon. Many familiar faces amble in the small square, some shaded by tall trees and others sat around benches and tables, eating, drinking. There is a small gathering around musicians—a rotund lute player, tall viola player, miniature singer, and a muscular _flauto dolce_ player—in the midst of a lilting improvisation reminiscent of a coranto.

Hannibal sets the crate down in a rare vacant space at the end of a long table, lifting his head to look for Paolo and Zanetta’s familiar forms.

He finds them wrapped within one another, attached at the lips underneath the sweeping, blooming boughs of a particularly fragrant deciduous. He sees that they follow no traditions, here—simply happy to be amongst their friends, and against one another.

But upon seeing him do they divide, gripping him into a tandem embrace that shakes laughter from all three of their chests.

“Zanetta, Paolo,” Hannibal announces, separating, “this is Signore Will Graham. Will, my friends, Zanetta and Paolo.”

Paolo at once moves forward to take Will’s hands within his own, bending to kiss him upon the cheek in the typical familiar, masculine greeting. Zanetta follows soon after, and of her own style, presses two kisses to Will’s cheeks—one on either side of his mouth. They are both beaming, and Will’s eyes drift to Hannibal’s who, watching him, affirms that this is indeed how social interactions are supposed to proceed.

Despite this Will seems almost lost, and an overwhelming need forms in Hannibal to protect him—perhaps, something akin to this possession raiding the normalcy of his breathing. Has Will had friends like this, been to events like this, ever? He realizes he does not know the bounds to which Will’s loneliness reaches.

“Will—the Signore—has wanted to thank you, Paolo—for your forethought during my unfortunate imprisonment.”

Will shoots a look at Hannibal and, self-consciously, clears his throat.

“Yes. Thank you, Paolo. And congratulations,” he says, reaching uncertainly. Zanetta is keen to pick his hand up so she does, and Will bestows his well-wishes upon her open expression, instead.

“Signore Graham,” she intones. “Thank you, so much, for attending this day today, the celebration of our love. Please, feel at home. We know you make our Hanni feel as much, and would adore it if we could return to favor—even in the slightest.”

Will’s eyes flash to him at this. _Hanni?_ they ask, unabashed. Hannibal all but rolls his eyes.

“Never call me this,” he hisses, and Will’s eyes widen at the demand. Zanetta and Paolo both are far too drunk to pick up the tone nor the words, and behave equally as obliviously to whatever passes between Will and their dear friend, now. They are entirely too focused on one another, all grins and candy apples.

Will’s face seems to portray the delight in, first, the name—but second, that Hannibal thinks he would, or could, address him by it—prompting his expressed forbidding.

“Alright,” Will nearly laughs, and Hannibal realizes this is the first time he has seen, heard, such a show of human emotion raise from his beloved. Not even in their long talks had he managed to make Will laugh—a wry chuckle here or there, but beyond that… Hannibal cannot help but be enraptured by the mysticism of the sound.

He follows Will’s whims, following this. Too enraptured to do much else.

That is how they end up stood in front of the ensemble.

Unsure if Will has seen anything like this before—but sure he has seen it taken to the tenth degree, to the far extreme of concerto and opera—Hannibal studies his young Signore’s expression closely as the dusk sets in.

It is all honey, lit by the golden blaze of the evening sun once more. It is all fortitude and give, it expands even as it keeps it secrets, encircling him. And it takes everything in Hannibal to not lick the sweet drips from Will’s jaw with the pressing flat of his tongue.

Hannibal watches with pure ecstasy, the rapture that falls over those fine features, then there is something wrong. Will comes to suddenly like waking from a dream. He has his eyes on people at the edge of the crowd, just past the ensemble, who are unfamiliar to Hannibal—people he has seen neither at _Tabacchi Dorato_ nor around sesto Oltrarno.

“We must go,” Will intones. “Please, Hannibal. Please.”

Hannibal, bereft of breath from this worrying tone from his Signore, jumps to immediately.

“Yes, okay. To mine?”

Will nods quickly and Hannibal is unsure if the younger man even heard him—pushing the responsibility of his safety, entrusting it, to Hannibal wholeheartedly. His fingers dig into Hannibal’s forearm, sharp, which Hannibal grabs within his own as they move.

Hannibal, expert as he is in stealth, takes Will with him to the edges and shadows of the square—unsure as he is of what they are leaving from, but knowing that Will is troubled. This alone is enough.

It is only a few streets to his hovel, and Will does not stop throwing glances over his shoulder as they proceed.

“What is the matter, Will?” He thinks of mentioning how very rude it is to leave an event without the proper goodbyes, but decides against this when he sees the fevered brightness in Will’s eyes.

“It may be nothing but—if it is, after all, something…” Will trails off. He grips tighter to Hannibal’s palm.

Opening the lock to his room, Hannibal feels Will press into the shallow indent that his doorway makes into the building, as if to hide. His body is almost against Hannibal’s, breathing as it is, and as Hannibal pulls the door toward him by its handle, the movement forces him obliquely against Will. Their eyes meet as Hannibal turns to accommodate Will’s shuffle past him, an allowance under the guise of politeness, but one that forces this fear-wild Will to brush by him, front to front, nonetheless.

Shutting and shackling the door behind him, Hannibal bends in the dark to the table—lighting the simple, stout candelabra there. Three flames flicker into existence, and Will’s face is shadowed, watching him withdraw.

“Are you quite alright?”

Will swallows, that protuberance in his throat ricocheting down and then up underneath the sharp angle of his chin. He nods irregularly.

Moving about the rush-covered floor, Hannibal takes a new angle on the surface of his broad table and brings forth a wine skin and two glasses, pouring one for each of them as he measures the intent with which Will brings his eyes against his back. An intent like melting coals—Hannibal shoulders this well, turning with all the grace in the world to offer Will a cup.

Will takes it and drinks greedily. Hannibal has never seen him like this—not exactly like this, not even around Lazzaro in the hidden moments he was not supposed to have witnessed.

Hannibal sips thoughtfully, regarding Will with his back to the candelabra—he sits on the edge of the table, collecting himself as Will looks fervently around the room. Will takes another mouthful and swallows, and Hannibal places his own glass back against the table, deciding. He takes Will’s, too, starting a hummed rhythm with subtle movements of his throat. He recalls the dance at the wedding, brings it forth with his own machinations into the heavy air between them as a shade of a song.

Will is looking to him with some quizzical expression—but curious, ever curious this dark boy of his.

Gliding closer, Hannibal strengthens his hum and bares it from his body as a bird takes flight, slipping his palm once more into Will’s—only this time to snake his other hand, his arm entire, around Will’s waist, to take Will in a dance.

Will understands after a moment, and his stilted movements smooth out to be led by Hannibal’s own. They dance like this, at a soothing pace to a lockstep dance, for quite some time.

* * *

Will rests his cheek against Hannibal’s chest eventually, and Hannibal knows he has taken the younger man’s mind from his terror, his worry. At least for now.

“The feeling of your knife unnerves me,” Will murmurs gently. “I have had too many dreams of it, lately.”

“Would you like me to remove it?” Hannibal looks down as Will tilts his face up.

But Will shakes his head. “May I—hold it?”

Hannibal smiles. “Of course.”

“Only, you must stay away from me—if I seize…”

Hannibal nods, understanding. He separates from Will, pulls the dagger from his doublet, passing it handle-first into Will’s open palm. Will, standing in the center of his hovel, takes it between his fingers, admires its glinting blade in the candlelight. That is when Hannibal sees it, as if it were ink written over Will’s face.

Hannibal reaches for his wine, brings it up to wet his lips.

“Did you dream of killing me?” he asks softly. Will’s face is carved from marble, something so beautiful it is frightening.

“…Yes.”

Hannibal leans nonchalantly against the edge of his table, crossing his arm over his chest.

“Tell me—how you did it.”

Will’s voice is barely louder than a breath. “With this.”

“Have you handled a weapon before, like that?”

Shadowed, depthless, Will’s eyes regard him. “Not in the way you mean, no.”

The answer seems sufficient on the surface, but Hannibal knows of the great beast that dwells beneath the waters. It is all shade and turning, slipping just out of sight, out of reach.

“Will you ever speak to me of your past, Will?” he breathes.

But Will is leaning to place the knife on the far corner of the table, picking his wine back up with the same hand, then walking over to lower himself onto Hannibal’s mattress. He looks up at where Hannibal remains reposed, all that distance away, then brings his eyes down to the space beside him.

“Are we staying here, tonight?”

“We can, if you would like.”

Will’s gaze shifts back to his own. “Only if you will leave your chair this time.”

Hannibal breathes in, taking this unfamiliar expression on his Signore’s features—a shade of shyness among the sureness, mingling with uncertainty. Bareness of another kind.

“Oh, Will—What are you asking of me?”

Will swallows a bit of wine. “I think—I hope—that you know.”

A shiver of advent passes through Hannibal’s spine, along the alpine length of it. He knows that there is a threshold opening up in between them, a threshold that he can cross if only he possessed the correct words to unlock, to open, to intrude with permission, granted.

“I would like very much to lie with you,” Hannibal admits. “But that is not something we can do, is it?”

“Why not?” Will’s eyes shift, catching light, searching.

“Many reasons, I thought. But most of all, because of your seizures. I do not want to—”

“That is what has been staying your hand in the matter this whole time?” Will asks, fervent, interrupting. “I know you enjoy your flirting jests at my expense, but—I thought it was that you were not… That you did not ache for me, as I ache for you.”

Hannibal does not blink. _Here they are—the words_.

“I have ached for you without end, _vita mia_.”

“Then tell me—” Will begins, moving to set his wine on the rushes, leaning back on his palms and against the mattress, stretching his legs out into one long line. Opening. “How did you dream of it—Of taking me?”

Hannibal flicks his eyes over Will’s bold expression, seeking, memorizing. “Just as you are right now,” he murmurs, making his voice a low, steady hum, soothing. “I dreamt of pulling every thread and button from you—tasting and catching scent of every part of you I could.”

“Where?” Will asks, a small stretch rocking his hips forward, imperceptibly—a movement at which Hannibal’s breath hitches.

“The sweat of your underarm, the angled arch of your lower back, the hair around your sex.”

Will’s chest rises and falls, nudging the white charm of his _mano figa_. “What of my mouth?”

Hannibal moves, finally, from the table, picking his feet over the rushes, until he is able to bend down and touch Will if he so dared—almost fearful that this is just another mirage, an image his mind has brought here into his room to take away upon waking.

Hannibal watches as Will’s jaw tilts up to keep his eye’s contact, forcing the smallest keyhole to open between those two finely shaped lips. He takes Will’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, gentle.

“Your lovely mouth, I would save for last, Will. Would wait until pants came from between your exquisite lips to cover them with my own. I would delve my tongue deep into you, lick you, savor you.”

Will’s eyes shine with a veneer of desire, and his hands turn into slow fists against the sheet from his position on Hannibal’s low mattress.

“Have you been touched like that before, Will?” Hannibal asks, and Will is shaking his head softly, so softly.

“Have you not—” Hannibal breathes, moving his hand to brush his fingertips over Will’s cheekbone, jawline. “Has no one ever proved their love to you?”

“No,” Will responds, as though it pains him at the same time he is made ecstatic by it. His eyes flutter closed at Hannibal’s touches, and Will unconsciously nuzzles his profile to make purchase with Hannibal’s palm. “No one has even spoken to me of doing so.”

With a single, deft movement, Hannibal brings himself to his knees in front of Will, still holding his face. “Would you like it if I did those things to you now?”

Will’s eyelashes tremble open and his lips part, tongue shifting forward as if forming a word that does not reach fruition. Instead, Will simply nods.

There is a sharp jolt of desire shooting through Hannibal, settling in a dank heat between his legs. He brings his hand from Will’s face and presses it into the edge of his mattress, supporting his weight as he leans in to ghost his mouth close to Will’s own. Will brings his fingers up to feel Hannibal’s hair, carding his fingertips through the straight, blond-grey strands, but not delving forward—waiting for Hannibal as if making a gift of the moment, allowing him to choose the right one.

“Patient boy,” Hannibal purrs. “I’ll be sure to reward that.”

He glances away from Will’s mouth without touching it, instead pressing his lips ardently into the hollow of Will’s cheek as he cradles the man’s face close. He feels Will exhale longingly, and his eyes involuntarily shut at the sweet sound.

“How long have you ached like this?” Hannibal asks, moving a palm underneath his own tunic covering Will’s divine skin. He kisses a wet line from Will’s cheek to the shell of his ear, nipping at the lobe and the piercings there, pulling ever so slightly on them.

“Since your first sketch,” Will breathes, elongating his spine unconsciously as pleasure rushes through him. “Since your gaze ran over me so incisively that I felt stripped naked, under it.”

Hannibal moves his mouth to Will’s neck as he works at unfastening the laces of the doublet, then the tunic, running his tongue along Will’s sharp jaw.

“We fell in unison, then,” Hannibal murmurs, letting the hum from his throat spread to his lips, spread to Will’s skin. “I, too, was bare under your gaze that day.”

He sinks his teeth in deeply to the flesh of Will’s neck, and Will takes a sharp breath in as his hand flies to Hannibal’s neck. Though Will does not draw away, but instead tries to arrest Hannibal’s throat by squeezing, the gesture like a shroud’s first fold falling away, showing Will as he is, uncloaked.

Hannibal feels his cock throb at the pressure of Will’s hand, the short difficulty of his next inhale. He laves at his bite and pushes the left side of the tunic from Will’s abdomen, looking up as he lowers his mouth to his Signore’s collarbone, grabbing Will’s upper arm and raising it to nip a line toward his underarm.

A shiver runs through Will as he licks the shallow bowl, tasting salt and inhaling the heady essence of Will’s scent caught in his soft body hair. He nuzzles the bridge of his nose there and Will’s hand moves from his throat to the back of his neck, fingers grasping the ends of his hair.

Hannibal’s body has drifted between Will’s legs, and Will accommodates him by opening his thighs wider. Just under his chest, Hannibal feels Will’s hardness growing, pressing into his sternum as he pursues the sensations of Will’s physical being.

Hannibal knows, suddenly, he is too clothed, seeing Will breathing heavily, half reclined, half exposed on the surface of his bed. He wants to be closer, feel more, without the impediment of cloth.

He takes his mouth from the side of Will’s chest with a last, soft kiss, moving his hands to untie the thin rope fastening of his doublet. He meets Will’s expectant gaze as he does so, slipping each arm from its brocade sheath to leave him with only his tunic, which he, too, begins to unfasten. Soon his chest is bare, and Will’s eyes are dancing in the candlelight as he looks on.

“Hannibal…” Will breathes. He sits up a bit, and the other side of the loose tunic falls from his shoulder, pools on top of the mattress. “I—” He swallows around the unfinished thought, pushing himself forward to slip off the edge of the bed and into Hannibal’s lap.

Stradling him, Will moves his hands over, feeling, the expanse of Hannibal’s downy chest, bending to run his tongue over a pert nipple before taking it between his teeth.

Hannibal’s head lolls back and he supports his weight on the heels of his hands, locking his elbows. Will’s scant weight in his lap brushes against his length and sends a dizzying wave of desire to course through him. The pain and pleasure of Will’s sharp teeth, his soft fingertips, is deeply rousing and it is all he can do to hold himself back from being altogether too rough, too fast with this consummate creature.

When Will unlatches Hannibal looks into his Signore’s eyes, a type of silent communication passing between them, then moves forward in one long stretch. He flips Will over the edge of the mattress, onto his front so his hips bend, hook over the edge, descending with his mouth on the concave line of his spine at his lower back. Will pushes back onto him as Hannibal teasingly pulls the thick hose from over his haunches, moving his mouth down inch by inch.

Will gasps when he delves his tongue into the crevice between his ass cheeks, licking a line from his sack up to the tight ring of muscle hidden there. Hannibal hums with pleasure and spits, spreading a cheek wider to better breach the muscle with his tongue.

The more he swirls his tongue’s tip around this spot, the more desperate Will’s pleasured twitching becomes. He is soon bucking ardently, and Hannibal must still his hips with his hands to keep his face buried between Will’s milky white haunches, to probe deeper into that tight hole.

When he finally withdraws, he flips Will back to his front and wants, immediately, to take in the expression on the man’s face. It is breathtaking—sweat-stained, rosy cheeked, with eyes delirium-bright.

“I want to remember you like this forever, Will,” Hannibal murmurs. He lingers as Will pants, blushing furiously, then is casting his gaze down the long line of Will’s torso to the nest of hair at the crux of his thighs and the creamy, straining prick pressing up against his lower belly.

His mouth descends once more, merciless. With one palm cupping Will’s sack, fondling, he laps his tongue expertly over the head of Will’s cock, taking it into the warmth of his mouth. It presses into his attentions as if possessing a mind of its own, and as he begins to suck, he hears an unabashed moan exit Will’s lips.

The man’s hips have fallen open to him and Will is shameless, now, with his movements and his noises. Hannibal cannot resist popping the younger man’s prick from his mouth to lick his own fingers, continue again as he inserts a single digit into Will’s asshole and take him deep into his throat in unison.

“Hannibal,” Will cries, the sound a desperate pule. The ecstasy on his face, the tension in his knit brow is a cousin to the expression he makes when in the rapture of his fits, and this makes Hannibal’s heartbeat erratic. He adds another finger and Will presses down on them of his own volition, arching for more contact. His saliva is mixing with Will’s salty pre-cum, the man’s beautiful cock like a blade against his lips, he is so hard.

Without stopping, Hannibal reaches down to rid himself of his own hose before letting Will’s length fall from his mouth, moving them in tandem to lie on the surface of the mattress on their sides, facing one another.

Hannibal reaches down to position Will’s cock between his thighs, wrapping his arms around the younger man’s sweat slick lower back to draw him close. Will clings and shakes, Hannibal murmuring a brief instruction—“Make yourself feel good on me, Will.”

Will sighs are wrecked as he begins to reflexively move his hips, drawing himself in and out of Hannibal’s thighs. Hannibal helps guide him with his arms, pressing kisses to his forehead and face as his Signore finds a rhythm that brings moans once more from the depths of his throat.

“ _Luce dei miei occhi_ ,” Hannibal breathes, pressing his lips to Will’s closed eyelids—first the right, then the left. “ _Bell’uomo mio_ , I love seeing you like this.”

Will cries out, his forehead falling to Hannibal’s shoulder, placing a hand on Hannibal’s upper arm as he tightens his thighs around Will’s spit slick piece. Will fucks with abandon, his mouth hot and clinging to Hannibal’s throat, collarbone.

Then Hannibal, reaching, slips his fingers once more into the tight heat of Will’s asshole and hooks them, delving rhythmically, until Will is spasming.

An animalistic sound tumbles from Will’s throat as he holds tight to Hannibal, draws his hips turbulently back and forth as he rides the intensity of his orgasm through to the end.

Will is cursing softly, the inelegant words made exotic and desirable by his panting, his innate beauty. The string of them lilting over into the space between them makes Hannibal laugh lightly, and Will is grinning as the aftershocks of pleasure soak deeply into his skin, into his bones.

Then Hannibal slides his fingers to Will’s wrist, bringing his palm in the sticky mess he has made between his thighs before moving it to his own cock. Will instinctually wraps his fingers tight, and the first cum-slick slide of them over his length is almost too much for Hannibal to bear—touch starved and aching for it this whole time, the sensation is so pleasurable it crosses over into the thorny realm of pain. His laughter is immediately cut, felled by an overpowering need.

Their eyes meet and Hannibal nods with a moan as Will’s eyes, cloudy, search his for an indication that he is doing the right thing. That he is making Hannibal feel like Hannibal made him feel. Those eyes hover so close, and Hannibal is so overcome with need, with love, that he leans forward to take Will’s mouth against his own, running his tongue over those perfect, defined lips before Will’s mouth opens in allowance at the gesture.

Hannibal sinks a deep moan into the faultless cavity of Will’s mouth, laving, licking as Will’s hand strokes him to tremoring pleasure. It is only a few tight-fisted strokes until Hannibal is cumming hard, his seed spreading against Will’s fingers and lean stomach as he presses their mouths together, impossibly close.

Will does not unlatch from him and Hannibal does not want him to, their kiss deepening as Hannibal’s head swims, his cock weakly spurting the last of his load into Will’s palm. Then Will slips his sticky hand around to grasp Hannibal by the haunches, bringing him forward until there is no room at all left between them.

Will keeps kissing him and Hannibal matches his consuming pace—tries to keep up, blindly reaching toward Will’s entirely annihilating movements until their lips are both kiss-swollen and sensitive.

The tooth he digs into Will’s lip causes a surge of blood to spout, one Hannibal cannot resist running the pad of his thumb through, smearing the liquid against Will’s face and then bringing it to his own tongue. He latches hesitantly to the skin he has bitten, tasting bitter copper but unable to contain this desire for their fluids to become one, to mingle so much as their desires, their pleasures, their bodies have. Will moans despite the pain and writhes.

“Oh, Will,” Hannibal murmurs, breathing in the other man’s scent deeply. He cradles his face close, nuzzling their noses, taking the scant blood upon his own face. “I love you.”

Will breathes heavy, pressing closer. Hannibal feels the half-hardness twitch into his hip, and he thinks that maybe the younger man is ready for another go before he himself will be able to cum again.

“I’ve opened the door to something here, haven’t I?” Hannibal asks with some mirth in his low timbre, and Will nods many times over.

“At the risk of seeming… too eager, I very much want to fuck you, Hannibal. Want you to teach me how to fuck you, so we can both be pleasured at once.”

Hannibal suppresses the sublime desire that manifests corporeally, that sends an electric shock to his groin and wakes it into a near-painful half hardness. Will is moving his angled hipbones, kissing ardently at his neck, as his Signore’s attentive erection brushes up against his own spent yet wanting length.

Hannibal bucks shallowly, and he knows it is all over when Will lifts himself to his knees in order to begin his descent, kissing a line down the center of Hannibal’s abdomen and all the way to his cock.

Hannibal brings the back of his hand over his forehead as Will descends on his cock head, licking from it both of their seed before moving to suck it shallowly into his cheeks. His touch is enough for Hannibal—just the movement of it, the eagerness. Even the occasional inexperienced edge of teeth makes him cry out, enjoying the sliver of pain that mixes in with the pleasure of it. He is soon unbearably hard once more.

He reaches down, forcing his eyes open to regard Will through his eyelashes. He cards his fingers gently through the peach fuzz behind Will’s ear, encouraging him, reassuring him.

Soon Will, too curious to stay in one spot for long, moves his mouth from Hannibal’s prick with a flick of his eyes, fondling Hannibal’s sack with the plane of his tongue and moving down further to his hole. He moves his palms to the undersides of Hannibal’s thighs, pushing them up to gain better access to the spot that causes such a tremor to run through Hannibal’s leonine limbs.

“Just like that,” Hannibal breathes as Will’s tongue delves into him. “Prepare me for you, Will.”

Will hums in his throat, the sensation bringing itself to his lips, to Hannibal’s overstimulated, sensitive hole. When Will reaches up to grasp once more at his cock, Hannibal has to fist the sheets of his bed and pull to suppress a cry that threatens to tear his throat in half.

Will stops, looking up. “Hannibal…?”

“No, sweet boy, no—this is good,” Hannibal manages. “Please, do not stop now.”

His length leaking openly against his lower belly, Hannibal watches as Will descends to his succor once more. He holds his thigh up, open for Will as the man pushes a final bit of his tongue inside of him, only to withdraw. Leaning on his knees, now, Will spits into his palm and rub its over his prick with a shiver of ecstasy. His eyes are trained on Hannibal’s own, clear and then hazy, above a light mist of red blush on the high angle of his cheeks.

“Can I—?” Will murmurs, asking with the whole of his being. Hannibal nods and breathes deeply as Will positions himself, sitting back on his heels with his knees bent on either side of Hannibal’s hips. He angles his eager length down, pressing it firmly against Hannibal’s opening before pushing past the barrier—sinking deftly in.

 _Whole_ could not begin to describe the feeling that overcomes Hannibal as Will moves deeper, using Hannibal’s hips as leverage to bend forward, place his hands on either side of Hannibal’s waist. _Enamored_ would not begin to encapsulate how it feels to look upon Will’s pleasured, focused expression and know that he is the one providing this for the other man, finally—what he has wanted for so long.

Each movement brings Will closer, filling Hannibal all that more, the steady ebb and flow of pleasure as Will draws in and out of him rocking through them to a gentle, singular rhythm.

“Does that feel good?” Will murmurs, flicking his hips. He is sweating, the droplets covering Hannibal’s chest and losing themselves between the grey fur there.

“Yes, yes, Will—” Hannibal cries. “You’re doing so good. Do you feel—me shaking for you? Feel how tight?”

Will nods, head lolling with desire above his flexing shoulders, upper arms. “Yes, fuck. Is that—?”

“How close I am?” Hannibal bites out with a moan. “Yes, but—I’ve been—been close for a while and—I don’t think I can—”

Will goads him, fucking deeper, coaxing, “Try, for me. You can—just once more, Hannibal. Once more, _cuore mio_.”

Hannibal bites his lip, pushing back against Will’s heated thrusts. Overstimulated and left raw under Will’s touches, Hannibal cannot bear the fine, sharp edge of the pleasure that passes through him, now, at Will’s small yet succinct movements into him.

Despite his inexperience, Will listens well to the cues of Hannibal’s body—sees them, feels them, pursues them relentlessly. Soon, Hannibal’s mouth is open and the arch of his throat stark and bare against the empty air as Will brushes again and again against the place deep within him that has the power of the oubliette—one to make him forget, to recall nothing except, here in the dank darkness, Will’s cock so full within him that he can do nothing else but feel it.

When he cums at Will’s allowance, it is like throwing himself off the face of a pitched cliff. Falling, endless, through thin air with only Will’s warm body, warm kiss to anchor him to the moment.

…

“When does this end?” Will asks seriously, woven close to him with the same eyes Hannibal had seen that first day at his villa, trying so ardently to be strong—but underneath, full of fear. “When will this end, Hannibal?”

“There is so much time, _vita mia_ ,” Hannibal begins, still recovering his breath, smoothing Will’s sweat-soaked skin at his temple. “Time enough for us to identify and honor each other’s bodies. Our secret spaces that leave us bare and begging for one another.”

Will’s inner fire lights once more at these words. Still tasting Will’s saliva on his lips, Hannibal sighs indulgently, lovingly.

“I—I wish to comfort you, Will. Be with you. You are a phenomenon—never ending. You are a star that lights my path—you are… everything, to me. I knew this before, but—” Hannibal stops to swallow, moving his tongue past Will’s swollen lips to take him once more into a deep kiss. Hannibal breathes in Will’s scent desperately when they break, and Will clings to him.

“I knew this, but am still amazed,” Hannibal whispers. “This will never change for as long as you allow me to know you. I will always, endlessly, be tied to you.”

Will’s sweat mingles into the very pores of him, making their skin slick with every breath against one another, Will’s palm pressing against his jaw. Hannibal moves purposefully, nuzzles into the touch, kisses the holy skin of his lover like a nun kisses her rosary during prayer.

“Despite what you do not know of me?”

“Yes, Will,” Hannibal says, and he knows he has spoken no truer truth in his forty years. “Despite these things.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm so van Honthorst died before the 1674 storm so I guess Hanni was just a student of his reigning school and not actually learning explicitly from him. Candy apples (toffee apples) were not invented until 1908 also. And(!), ignore that love marriages were not really a thing during this period? I needed it for plot reasons, I guess. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! 🤠
> 
> S/O to KseniaBisset for concrit w/language! <3


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